Varieties of Self-Awareness: New Perspectives from Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, and Comparative Philosophy (Contributions to Phenomenology, 121) [1st ed. 2023] 3031391748, 9783031391743

Table of contents :
Editor’s Introduction
Contents
Part I: Possible, Impossible, and Fictional Self-Awareness
Chapter 1: Husserlian Shadows in Plato’s Cave: Layers of Contingency and Fictional Variations on Self-Awareness
A First Disclaimer: Plato’s Cave
A Second Disclaimer: Phenomenological Self-Awareness
A Third Disclaimer: Phenomenology and Poetical Fiction
Republic VII (514b–517c): A Brief Reminder and a Neglected Detail
A Twofold Challenge: Plato’s Poetical Fiction and Husserl’s Varieties of Self-Awareness
Variation, Self, and Self-Awareness
Martians, Giants, and Savvy Horses
Conscious Prisoners
Habitual Prisoners
Human Prisoners
Ghostly Prisoners, or: Are Plato’s Prisoners Real Humans After All?
Ghostly Human Prisoners
Shadow Self-Awareness for Ghostly Human Prisoners
References
Chapter 2: Ghosts of Ourselves: Self-Responsibility in Georg Simmel’s The View of Life
Achsendrehung des Lebens
Todesverflochtenheit des Lebens
More Than Life
Absolute Self-Responsibility
References
Chapter 3: Daydreaming and Self-Awareness
Why Should Daydreams Be Interesting for Phenomenologists?
What Is Daydreaming?
Daydreaming and Self-Awareness
Daydreaming, Self-Awareness, and Ichspaltung
The Constitutive Function of Daydreaming
Conclusion
References
Part II: Embodied Self-Awareness: Incorporation, Kinesthesis, and Sexuality
Chapter 4: Varieties of Incorporation: Beyond the Blind Man’s Cane
Introduction
Body-Schema Incorporation
Body-Image Incorporation
Seen-Body Incorporation
Relations
Conclusion
References
Chapter 5: Kinesthesis and Self-Awareness
Introduction
Husserl’s Concept of Kinesthesis in Ding und Raum
Husserl’s Concept of Kinesthesis in Ideas II
Husserl’s Trouble with the Concept of Kinesthesis in 1932
Summary in Phenomenological Notation
Conclusion
References
Chapter 6: The Pre-reflective Dimension of Self-Awareness and the Bipolar Structure of Existence: Merleau-Ponty’s Way from Body Schema to Sexual Schema
Introduction
Phenomenology’s Existential Turn and the Question of Intentionality
From Intentionality of Act to Operative Intentionality
Pathological Behavior as Behavior of Pre-reflective Life
First Illustration of the Ambiguity of Existence by the Body Schema: Distinction Between Concrete Movement as Mode of Actuality and Abstract Movement as Mode of Possibility
Further Illustration of the Ambiguity of Existence by the Sexual Schema and Sexual Intentionality
Sexual Schema
Sexual Intentionality and Sexual Self-Awareness
Sexuality as Existence
Sexuality and the Metaphysical Structure of Human Existence: The Dialectic of Autonomy and Dependence
Sexuality as Ambiguous Atmosphere: Existence as the Non-bypassable Movement of Transcendence on the Basis of Facticity
Conclusion
References
Part III: Historical, Social, and Environmental Self-Awareness
Chapter 7: Historical Self-Awareness
Narrative
Intersubjectivity and We-Intentionality
Self-Awareness as Membership Awareness
Historical Temporality
Historical Self-Awareness
Conclusion
References
Chapter 8: Individuation and Self-Awareness in Wilhelm Dilthey
Introduction: Individuality and Self-Awareness
Historical Life and Relational Individuality
Dilthey’s Philosophy of Relational Individuality and Its Background
Individuation and Becoming a Self: A Sketch
Models of Subjectivity and Self-Awareness
The Hermeneutics and Politics of Relational Individualism
The Structural Formation of the Self and Self-Awareness
Reflexive Self-Awareness and its Historicity
Conclusion: Self-Reflective Life and the Critical Vocation of Philosophy
Bibliography
Chapter 9: Ecological Self-Awareness in the Anthropocene
Introduction
From Modernity to the Anthropocene
De-centering the Human
Nature’s Vulnerability and Human Responsibility
Conclusion
Bibliography
Part IV: Comparative Philosophy of Self-Awareness
Chapter 10: Self-Awareness in Nishida as Auto-Realization qua Determination of the Indeterminate
Introduction
Pure Experience
Intuition, Reflection, Volition
Place
The System of Universals
The Determination of the Nothing
The Other
The Historical World and the Dialectical Universal
The Religious Awareness of God or the Absolute
The Incompleteness of the Infinite: The Absolute as Indeterminate
Bibliography
Chapter 11: How to Become Conscious of Consciousness: A Mediation-Focused Approach
Introduction
What Does It Mean to Think About Consciousness?
What Makes Us Conscious of Consciousness?
The Concept of Consciousness Is Mediated by the Negation of Consciousness
Mediation by Refection
The Fundamental Circularity Between Direct Consciousness and Reflection
Forgotten Mediations and the Substantialization of Consciousness
From Being to Mediation: The Methodological Implications of the Mediation-Focused Approach
Conclusion
References
Chapter 12: Beyond Self-Representationalism: A Neo-Dignāgian Theory of Consciousness
The Self-Representational Theory of Consciousness
How Is Inner Awareness Possible?
The Accumulation of Aspects
Is Inner Awareness Itself Conscious?
Objections and Replies
Conclusion
References
Index

Citation preview

Contributions to Phenomenology 121

Saulius Geniusas   Editor

Varieties of Self-Awareness New Perspectives from Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, and Comparative Philosophy

Contributions to Phenomenology In Cooperation with The Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology Volume 121

Series Editors Nicolas de Warren, Department of Philosophy  Pennsylvania State University State College, PA, USA Ted Toadvine, Department of Philosophy  Pennsylvania State University State College, PA, USA Editorial Board Members Lilian Alweiss, Trinity College Dublin  Dublin, Ireland Elizabeth Behnke, Ferndale, WA, USA Rudolf Bernet, Husserl Archive KU Leuven, Belgium David Carr, Emory University Atlanta, GA, USA Chan-Fai Cheung, Chinese University of Hong Kong Sha Tin, Hong Kong James Dodd, New School University New York, USA Alfredo Ferrarin, Università di Pisa Pisa, Italy Burt Hopkins, University of Lille Lille, France José Huertas-Jourda, Wilfrid Laurier University Waterloo, Canada Kwok-Ying Lau, Chinese University of Hong Kong Sha Tin, Hong Kong

Nam-In Lee, Seoul National University Seoul, Korea (Republic of) Dieter Lohmar, University of Cologne Cologne, Germany William R. McKenna, Miami University Ohio, USA Algis Mickunas, Ohio University, Ohio, USA J. N. Mohanty, Temple University, Philadelphia, USA Dermot Moran, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland Junichi Murata, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan Thomas Nenon, The University of Memphis, Memphis, USA Gail Soffer, Roma Tre University, Rome, Italy Anthony Steinbock, Department of Philosophy Stony Brook University Stony Brook, New York, USA Shigeru Taguchi, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan Dan Zahavi, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark Richard M. Zaner, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, USA Scope The purpose of the series is to serve as a vehicle for the pursuit of phenomenological research across a broad spectrum, including cross-over developments with other fields of inquiry such as the social sciences and cognitive science. Since its establishment in 1987, Contributions to Phenomenology has published more than 100 titles on diverse themes of phenomenological philosophy. In addition to welcoming monographs and collections of papers in established areas of scholarship,the series encourages original work in phenomenology. The breadth and depth of the Series reflects the rich and varied significance of phenomenological thinking for seminal questions of human inquiry as well as the increasingly international reach of phenomenological research. All books to be published in this Series will be fully peer-reviewed before final acceptance. The series is published in cooperation with The Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology.

Saulius Geniusas Editor

Varieties of Self-Awareness New Perspectives from Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, and Comparative Philosophy

Editor Saulius Geniusas Department of Philosophy The Chinese University of Hong Kong Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong

ISSN 0923-9545     ISSN 2215-1915 (electronic) Contributions to Phenomenology ISBN 978-3-031-39174-3    ISBN 978-3-031-39175-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39175-0 This work was supported by University Grants Council © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

Editor’s Introduction

It is a platitude to observe that human consciousness, like the consciousness of other non-human animals, relates not only to transcendent things but also to itself. This claim is undeniable, yet its meaning is heavily overdetermined: one can relate to oneself in a variety of ways. We can begin by drawing a rather schematic distinction between three fundamental modes of self-relation: intentional, pre-intentional, and non-intentional. First, consider the basic structure of intentionality: any consciousness is consciousness of x, y, or z. But what is this x, y, or z? The object of intentional consciousness need not be transcendent to consciousness itself. Through reflective acts, consciousness can establish an intentional self-relation. This is one mode in which consciousness relates to itself. We can call it reflective self-consciousness. Second, consider what in recent discussions in phenomenology and related fields has been addressed under the heading of pre-reflective self-awareness. The common argument unfolds as follows: while being conscious of the cup of coffee on the table, one is also, at the same time, co-conscious of seeing the cup, of smelling its aroma, of feeling its texture with one’s fingers, etc. While intending any object whatsoever, one is also pre-reflectively co-aware of intentionally relating to the object in question. While any intentional act relates to objects, at the same time it relates back to itself at the pre-reflective level. Without such a basic self-relation, consciousness could not intend any object whatsoever. We can identify this mode of self-relation as pre-reflective self-awareness, understood as a mode of co-­awareness: consciousness is pre-reflectively self-aware while it intends x, y, or z. Thirdly, even when it does not take on an intentional relation to things and the world, consciousness can still live through bodily sensations, such as the feelings of cold or heat, pleasure or pain, or bodily irritation. Some suggest that persons in a coma find themselves precisely in such a condition. Sensations of this nature, which in phenomenology are commonly addressed under the heading of “sensings” (Empfindnisse), are also modes of self-relation. When consciousness lives through them, it turns back upon itself and comes to terms with what it experiences. In instances such as these, consciousness can relate to itself without at the same time relating to anything else: pain, or pleasure, or exhaustion, or irritation – that’s all v

vi

Editor’s Introduction

there is. We face here a mode of self-awareness that is irreducible to the first two types addressed above. Consciousness neither transforms itself into an intentional object nor does it co-relate to itself while intending certain intentional objects; rather, its non-intentional self-relation is lived through autonomously, and it is severed from all intentional relations and therefore cannot be qualified as a dimension of an intentional experience. So as to distinguish this mode of self-relation from pre-reflective self-awareness, understood as a dimension of intentional experience, we can call it non-intentional self-awareness. Employing Husserlian terminology, one could further qualify intentional self-­ awareness as noematic, pre-intentional self-awareness as noetic, and non-intentional self-awareness as hyletic. Each of the three modes of self-relation admits of a further complexity. The goal of this volume is to analyze this complexity at the levels of reflective, pre-reflective, and non-reflective experience. The goals are to demonstrate that self-awareness can be spoken of in many ways, to inquire into these ways, to discover to what degree they complement each other, and to interpret their philosophical significance. While self-awareness is one of the central themes in various contemporary philosophical traditions, according to the common view shared by the authors contributing to this volume, the phenomenon remains under-investigated. At the descriptive level, we are still confronted by various types of self-awareness that call for a further phenomenological analysis. At the interpretive level, it still remains to be shown how different modes of self-awareness impact our philosophical conceptions of consciousness and selfhood. It is not enough to claim that all our experiences are self-aware; to this, one must add that they are self-aware in a variety of ways. One of the goals of this volume is to broaden the analyses of self-awareness that we come across in phenomenology, hermeneutics, the philosophy of mind, Buddhist and Indian philosophies, as well as the Kyoto School. The chapters collected in this volume focus on embodied self-awareness, historical and social self-awareness, fictional self-awareness, sexual self-awareness, and ecological self-awareness. Yet other chapters pursue a dialogue between Eastern and Western conceptions of self-­ awareness. The volume thereby provides clear evidence that self-awareness can be spoken of in many ways and that different kinds of experiences are accompanied by different kinds of self-awareness. Self-awareness thereby emerges as a deeply complex phenomenon, one which is irreducibly multidimensional. The hope is that the different chapters collected here will contribute to the ongoing discussion of this fascinating as well as deeply puzzling feature of conscious life. Contributions to the volume are divided into three parts. Part I includes three chapters on fictional, possible, and impossible modes of self-awareness, focusing on how we become aware of ourselves not only in terms of actuality, but also in terms of possibility and impossibility. In Chap. 1, by focusing on often-neglected details of Plato’s allegory of the cave, Claudio Majolino puts to the test the conceptual resources of Husserl’s understanding of self-variation and weighs its relevance with respect to the concept of self-awareness. Majolino shows how fictions in general reveal selfhood in its different layers of contingency and which of these layers are revealed by the Platonic fiction of the cave: a fiction according to which the

Editor’s Introduction

vii

prisoners are aware of themselves as shadows among shadows. The chapter provides a series of reflections on the meaning and scope of fictional self-awareness. Nicolas de Warren’s chapter examines a specific form of self-awareness in which we become aware of our existence in a problematic sense. In thinking about what it means to have a life, one is often haunted by different senses of possibility: of what could or should be, of what might have been, and of what could never have been. In latter instances, we become aware of ourselves not in terms of actuality (who I am) or possibility (who I can or could become), but in terms of impossibility, namely, as the impossible selves that nonetheless define and hence belong to us. This is attested to in the experience of regret and remorse, not for what we did (or who we have been) but for what was impossible for us to be (or do). Drawing on Georg Simmel’s philosophy of life, the chapter explores the various senses in which we are responsible for ourselves in terms of who we have been and could be, as well as who it was impossible for us to be. In my own chapter, I am guided by the supposition that different types of experience (e.g., perception, memory and anticipation, phantasy, etc.) are characterized by different kinds of self-awareness. In the present context, I am concerned with one specific and under-investigated mode of experience: daydreaming. With the aim of showing how a phenomenological analysis of daydreaming significantly enriches our understanding of conscious life, I pay special attention to the following three insights: 1) The life of consciousness is characterized by the intertwining of sleep and wakefulness. Just as there is wakefulness in sleep, so also is there sleep in wakefulness. 2) The life of consciousness is not confined to the here and now. Besides those experiences which unfold from the present standpoint, there is also another group of experiences that can be qualified as absorbed, or displaced, experiences. 3) A phenomenological analysis of daydreaming brings to light how different modes of experience are characterized by different modes of self-awareness. The chapters of Part II are focused on embodied self-awareness, particularly on incorporation, kinesthesis, and sexuality. Giovanna Colombetti’s chapter addresses the experience of incorporating objects into the sense of self, in the sense of being a bodily or corporeal self. Most of the discussions on incorporations in the literature have been focused on the body schema, i.e., on how the use of tools can lead to experiencing them not as external objects, but as constitutive of the lived body. According to Colombetti, this is not the only way in which we can speak of embodied self-awareness and of being embodied selves. Besides experiencing ourselves as bodily in the sense implied by the notion of body schema, we can also incorporate objects into the body image and into the seen body. These forms of incorporation are not mutually exclusive but usually coexist in experience. Embodied self-awareness is further addressed in the chapter by Gediminas Karoblis, which is focused on kinesthetic self-awareness as it has been addressed in the framework of Husserlian phenomenology. It is remarkable that the phenomenological tradition always treated Husserl’s concept of kinesthesis as instrumental, and extremely rarely as valuable in itself. This is the reason why, according to Karoblis, Husserl’s own confusion regarding this concept has been overlooked in the literature. Dorion Cairns had remarked that Husserl had reversed his concept of

viii

Editor’s Introduction

kinesthesis several times in the early 1930s. Karoblis further shows that Husserl’s  accounts of kinesthesis, which he had provided in his 1907  Ding und Raum  lectures and  in Ideas II, are also significantly different from each other. Husserl’s late manuscripts provide yet further evidence for his revised approach to kinesthesis in the 1930s. Karoblis’ chapter presents Husserl’s wavering in great detail and clarifies the reasons for these revisions and transformations. Lau Kwok-Ying’s chapter presents a further study of embodied self-awareness by focusing specifically on sexuality. Special attention is paid here to the concepts of the body schema and the sexual schema of the body-subject in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception. Merleau-Ponty’s conception of a bipolar structure of human existence are here explicated through the phenomenon of sexuality. The analysis of sexual intentionality and sexual self-awareness leads to the explication of a two-level mode of self-awareness of embodied consciousness: the higher order reflective self-consciousness is preceded by and based on the primordial mode of self-consciousness generated by the subject’s lived experience. Part III is focused on various forms of social self-awareness. David Carr’s chapter addresses the historical aspect of self-awareness. Carr elucidates the insight that we relate to ourselves not as isolated individuals, but as members of historical communities. Carr’s phenomenological articulation of this insight examines and clarifies the narrative character of selfhood and self-awareness, the essential structures of intersubjectivity and we-intentionality, and the historical nature of temporality. By historical self-awareness, Carr understands that I am aware of myself as a member of a social entity that has a history. The latter is composed of other persons with whom I share a common subjectivity, one that is expressed when I say “we.” These social and historical aspects of self-awareness are further analyzed in Eric Nelson’s chapter, which offers a new interpretation of William Dilthey’s hermeneutical account of self-awareness and individuation. Nelson emphasizes that philosophy remains ensnared between reifying the individual subject and reducing it to the structuring forces of nature and society. Neither appears suitable to the first-person, participant perspective of the lived-experience of being a finite, conditional self within the world. Nelson reconsiders Dilthey’s alternative to the reductive poles of this dialectic. Dilthey’s felt and reflexive self-awareness entails, through resistance and relationality, the differentiation of self and others, things, environment, and world; the formation of an autobiographical sense of self through life’s continuities and discontinuities; and the interpretive, social, and material activities through which individuals not only manifest social systems but immanently appropriate, resist, and transform them. While some of the chapters collected in this volume focus on “regional” self-­ awareness, Mintautas Gutauskas addresses self-awareness in a global framework by focusing on ecological self-awareness. His chapter aims to explore the characteristics of contemporary ecological self-awareness from a phenomenologico-­ hermeneutic point of view. The chapter explains what kind of break occurred during the transition from modernity to the Anthropocene. According to Gutauskas, modernity most radically realized the tendency of Western thought: nature and animals were reduced to resources, and human relationships with them became technical.

Editor’s Introduction

ix

This is determined by a specifically modern self-awareness in which human activity and relations with the environment and oneself are grounded in reflexivity and control. In this regard, the epoch of the Anthropocene should be recognized not only as a new geological period but also as a turning point in self-awareness. According to Gutauskas, ecological self-awareness can arise only where the relationship with the environment is not technical, but ethical. In this new self-awareness, the self is understood not through a separation from the natural environment, but precisely through the interconnectedness with it. Finally, Gutauskas focuses on the experience of nature’s vulnerability, which he interprets as one of the most significant motives leading to the new sense of responsibility. The chapters comprising Part IV address self-awareness in the framework of comparative philosophy. John Krummel’s chapter tracks the development of the concept of self-awareness (jikaku 自覚) in the thought of the modern Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitarō (Kitarō Nishida, 西田幾多郎) (1870–1945), founder of the Kyoto School. Nishida’s oeuvre can be divided into distinct periods, from the 1910s to the 1940s until his passing, during which he thematized and focused on different issues. Nevertheless, self-awareness is a unifying theme throughout. Krummel traces how Nishida’s initial focus upon pure experience gives way to his focus upon its articulation in reflection vis-à-vis intuition as the unfolding of the will. This then leads to his thematization of the place wherein judgment or propositional thought unfolds and the broader contextual place wherein that place is situated. That thematization of place, in turn, develops into a look at the world where we interact as historical and social bodies with others (nature, other people, etc.). On the basis of Nishida’s references to the mathematics of set theory, Krummel further compares his understanding of self-awareness to Kurt Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems and to more recent mathematical theorists influenced by Gödel, whose understandings of the infinite resonate with Nishida’s understanding of the absolute nothing as assumed by self-awareness. How can we become conscious of consciousness? This is the central question to which Shigeru Taguchi develops a highly fascinating answer in his chapter. We cannot naturally become aware of the existence of consciousness because it is as natural to us as the air in our lives. In order to become aware of it, we need to go through its negations. The experience of the loss of one’s own or others’ consciousness (e.g., sleep, fainting, anesthesia, death, etc.) allows us to have an explicit awareness of the phenomenon of “consciousness” by contrasting it with its absence. As Husserl argues, to know that one has a direct experience of consciousness, one must engage in reflection. Without this mediation through reflection, there is no way to argue for the immediacy of one’s experience. This fact shows that we cannot address the existence of consciousness independently of the experience of becoming conscious of consciousness. This points to one of the deepest phenomenological challenges: the problem of the primal I and the phenomenologizing I. Taguchi argues that against the background of this problem, we can better understand the fundamental mediatedness of consciousness. In the final chapter, Yao Zhihua offers an investigation that is rooted in the Buddhist epistemological tradition, especially its founder Dignāga. In recent years,

x

Editor’s Introduction

the self-representational theory of consciousness emerged as a trend that moves beyond the debates between first-order and higher-order theorists, as well as the debates among the higher-order theorists regarding HOP (higher-order perception) versus HOT (higher-order thought). According to Yao Zhihua, the model of consciousness offered by this theory is closer to truth, yet it also has limitations. This chapter addresses these limitations and attempts to overcome them by developing a theory of consciousness that relies on the Buddhist epistemological tradition. The chapter leads to what Yao Zhihua calls a theory of the accumulation of aspects. It is not the goal of this volume to present a comprehensive framework that would exhaust the variety of senses in which one could speak of self-awareness in philosophy and related fields. This is simply not possible in a single volume. Despite its centrality in various philosophical traditions, self-awareness remains an under-­ investigated topic. The fundamental ambition of this volume is to bring to light those modes and features of self-awareness that remain overlooked in the literature, to stretch the limits of its analysis, and to spark further original inquiries in the future.1 Shatin, Hong Kong

Saulius Geniusas

  This work was supported by the General Research Fund (GRF) Grant. Project Title: Phenomenology of Absorption: A Study of Displaced Self-Awareness. Granting Agency: Research Grants Council (RGC) from the Research Grants Council University Grants Committee (grant number 14603820). I would also like to express my gratitude to the Faculty of Arts at The Chinese University of Hong Kong for publication subvention support. 1

Contents

Part I Possible, Impossible, and Fictional Self-Awareness 1

Husserlian Shadows in Plato’s Cave: Layers of Contingency and Fictional Variations on Self-Awareness������������������������������������������    3 Claudio Majolino

2

Ghosts of Ourselves: Self-Responsibility in Georg Simmel’s The View of Life����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   27 Nicolas de Warren

3

Daydreaming and Self-Awareness����������������������������������������������������������   45 Saulius Geniusas

Part II Embodied Self-Awareness: Incorporation, Kinesthesis, and Sexuality 4

 Varieties of Incorporation: Beyond the Blind Man’s Cane������������������   65 Giovanna Colombetti

5

Kinesthesis and Self-Awareness��������������������������������������������������������������   85 Gediminas Karoblis

6

 The Pre-reflective Dimension of Self-­Awareness and the Bipolar Structure of Existence: Merleau-Ponty’s Way from Body Schema to Sexual Schema ����������������������������������������������������������������������  101 Kwok-ying Lau

Part III Historical, Social, and Environmental Self-Awareness 7

Historical Self-Awareness������������������������������������������������������������������������  121 David Carr

8

 Individuation and Self-Awareness in Wilhelm Dilthey������������������������  135 Eric S. Nelson xi

xii

Contents

9

 Ecological Self-Awareness in the Anthropocene������������������������������������  153 Mintautas Gutauskas

Part IV Comparative Philosophy of Self-Awareness 10 Self-Awareness  in Nishida as Auto-­Realization qua Determination of the Indeterminate������������������������������������������������������  173 John W. M. Krummel 11 How  to Become Conscious of Consciousness: A Mediation-Focused Approach ������������������������������������������������������������  193 Shigeru Taguchi 12 B  eyond Self-Representationalism: A Neo-­Dignāgian Theory of Consciousness ������������������������������������������������������������������������  213 Zhihua Yao Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  225

Part I

Possible, Impossible, and Fictional Self-Awareness

Chapter 1

Husserlian Shadows in Plato’s Cave: Layers of Contingency and Fictional Variations on Self-Awareness Claudio Majolino

A First Disclaimer: Plato’s Cave An essay mentioning Plato’s allegory of the cave in its title runs the risk of being either trivial or pretentious – or both. Trivial insofar as it is hardly possible to say something new about one of the most over-commented on loci in the whole western philosophical tradition. Pretentious because, at least in this specific case, being original often means overinterpreting Plato’s text, turning a demanding allegory into something more allegorical. An essay throwing Husserl’s phenomenology into Plato’s cave is even worse. Although authors such as Martin Heidegger or Eugen Fink have provided rich and original interpretations of the cave, such phenomenological attempts have only confirmed the twofold predicament just mentioned. In the cases of both Heidegger and Fink, Plato’s allegory, together with its highly iconic elements (the prisoners, the cave, the fire, the outer world, the sun), is turned into the allegory of something else: the shift of understanding from truth as ἀληθέια to truth as ὀρθοτής, or the turning away from the natural to the transcendental attitude. Triviality and pretentiousness are also the Scylla and Charybdis of phenomenology itself. Instead of attempting to provide a supposedly “phenomenological” interpretation of Plato’s cave, here I will focus on a neglected detail in this allegory and use it as a foil to put to the test the conceptual resources of Edmund Husserl’s eidetic-­ transcendental account of self-awareness and highlight the interest of what I will call “fictional self-awareness.”

C. Majolino (*) Université de Lille, UMR-CNRS 8163 STL, Villeneuve-d’Ascq, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Geniusas (ed.), Varieties of Self-Awareness, Contributions to Phenomenology 121, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39175-0_1

3

4

C. Majolino

A Second Disclaimer: Phenomenological Self-Awareness The contemporary discussion of phenomenology and self-awareness is characterized by three distinctive features which I would call “ecumenism,” “syncretism,” and “interdisciplinarity.” 1. Ecumenism: contemporary scholars maintain that, when it comes to self-­ awareness, there is no substantial disagreement among phenomenologists. Husserl’s consciousness, Heidegger’s Dasein, Jean-Paul Sartre’s for-itself, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s bodily existence, or Michel Henry’s self-affecting life are varieties of the same position. They all postulate the existence of a pre-reflexive, primitive, non-objectifying form of self-awareness, an original form of non-­ observational self-acquaintance by means of which “subjectivity” is implicitly lived-through in a non-positional and non-thematic way. 2. Syncretism: such a fundamental claim can be translated into analytic jargon. Phenomenological self-awareness ultimately boils down to what analytic philosophers call the “first person perspective,” the “what is it like-for-me,” the “subjective feeling of experience,” or “first order” (or “lower order”) phenomenal consciousness (as opposed to “second-order,” or “higher order,” consciousness). Additionally, the experiential assumption of such a form of self-awareness can be supplemented by a series of “arguments” and “counter-arguments” (better explanatory power, absence of infinite regress, parsimony, etc.). 3. Interdisciplinarity: phenomenological self-awareness is open to cross-­ fertilization with the experimental data of the empirical sciences. Examples of such a primitive form of consciousness can be found in everyday scenarios (“If you ask me to give you a description of the pain I feel in my foot, or of what I was just thinking about, I would reflect on it and therefore be one order removed from the pain or the thought”). These examples can be also corroborated by sophisticated experiments in cognitive science (such as the “blind view” experiment).1 Given this triple fact, it does not come as a surprise that in the last 35 years phenomenological approaches to self-awareness have gained relevance in the contemporary philosophy of mind, providing an inclusive, credible, and broadly understandable account of phenomenology. Despite its advantages, this is not the framework within which I would like to address Husserl’s take on self-awareness in this chapter and to put it to the test of Plato’s allegory of the cave. Here are some reasons justifying my choice. ad (1). Though I believe that ecumenism could be a value, I am not sure about the homogeneity of the so-called “phenomenological tradition.” There are some unbridgeable differences within phenomenology, depending on how

 The most convincing advocates of this view are Zahavi and Gallagher (2008).

1

1  Husserlian Shadows in Plato’s Cave: Layers of Contingency and Fictional Variations…

5

­phenomenologists understand the structural features of phenomena.2 Arguably, the very life of phenomenology lies in such unbridgeable differences. While renouncing the idea of a shared phenomenological account of self-awareness as a pre-­reflexive, non-objectifying consciousness, I will only focus on the distinctiveness of Husserl’s stance. ad (2). Words matter and language is not indifferent to philosophy. Therefore, despite its value, there is no reason to be committed from the start to any form of syncretism. Importing analytic jargon into Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology has both advantages and disadvantages. Speaking like Searle or Nagel and casting a ready-made display of shared questions and answers is certainly useful to set the common rules of the game, providing a solid conceptual framework for further discussions. Yet one risks thereby leveling the discussion and leaving aside many aspects of Husserl’s views which hardly fit the available alternatives (first personal/third personal, first order/second order approaches, etc.) and addressing the standard problems to solve (infallibilism, epistemic asymmetry, self-reference, etc.). Accordingly, I will not only refrain from taking Husserl as the exemplification of a putative and more general “phenomenological account of self-awareness,” I will also deliberately avoid framing my discussion through the “categories” of contemporary analytic philosophy of mind. ad (3). This brings me to the role of interdisciplinarity and the use of standard examples of the analytic philosophy of mind drawn from everyday experiences (“feeling pain in the foot,” “thinking about something”) or scientific experiments in cognitive science (“the blind view”). If we drop ecumenism and syncretism – at least provisionally – and stick to the idiosyncratic aspects of Husserl’s phenomenology, we face the awkward idea that phenomenology is, just like geometry, not only a science but an eidetic science, that is, a science whose knowledge is synthetic a priori, whose truths are “eternal,” i.e., universal and necessary, and whose relevant states of affairs do not involve any empirical fact but only regional ontological essences (Husserl, 1977, §16). Additionally, while originally giving acts of perception are both prior and necessary with respect to the synthetic a posteriori knowledge and the contingently universal truths pertaining to the facts of empirical sciences, when it comes to eidetic sciences the situation is different. “Free phantasies acquire a position of primacy” and “‘fiction’ makes up the vital element of phenomenology as of every other eidetic science,” appearing as “the source from which the knowledge of ‘eternal truths’ is fed” (§70). Few phenomenologists beyond Husserl think that phenomenology is just like geometry and no analytic philosopher would be ready to accept this claim.3  See Majolino and Djian (2018, 2021).  Some authors advocating “phenomenological self-awareness” describe the phenomenological method by adding “eidetic variation” to the “epochê” and the “reduction” (Zahavi and Gallagher 2008, 30). Strictly speaking, however, none of the examples discussed by them involve any phantasy variation. They are all examples of actual or actually possible empirical case studies, either ordinary or scientific. 2 3

6

C. Majolino

The analogy between phenomenology and geometry has some specific implications with respect to the use of examples from everyday experience or cognitive sciences. This is of importance for understanding the unique way that Husserl approaches self-awareness, and for recognizing its philosophical relevance.

A Third Disclaimer: Phenomenology and Poetical Fiction Why should one test Husserl’s eidetic-transcendental approach to self-awareness on the basis of an allegedly neglected detail of Plato’s cave? The answer lies, precisely, in the Husserlian idea that phenomenology is, not unlike geometry, an eidetic science in which “phantasies” acquire a position of primacy and “fictions” play a major role. Let us remind ourselves of some general features of Husserl’s eidetic project. (1) Phenomenology and geometry are eidetic sciences insofar as their respective objects are not individuals but eidê. (2) An eidos is more than a mere “essence,” i.e., a general object: it is a “pure essence.” (3) “Essences” and “pure essences” could only be grasped by a distinctive, originally giving act called “ideation.” (4) Ideation is a founded act and, accordingly, essences can only be intuitively grasped on the basis of individuals. (5) “Pure essences” or eidê can be indifferently grasped on the basis of either actual individuals or fictional quasi-individuals. (6) An actual individual shows itself as intuitively present through its unique position in time (be it phenomenological or objective) and in a harmonious unity of coexistence with every other existing and empirically perceivable individual (past, present, and future). By contrast, a fictional quasi-individual shows itself as intuitively absent through its lack of position in time and its irreducible conflict with every other existing and empirically perceivable individual (Husserl, 1980, 67–68). The fact that the ideation of an eidos is indifferent with respect to its actual individual or fictional quasi-individual foundations has important consequences for the status of eidetic sciences. For instance, when eidetic sciences convene empirical examples of factual individuals, the latter are neither summoned qua actual individuals nor qua empirical facts, but only with respect to the content-determinations they share with their fictional quasi-individual counterparts. The abstractive ideation of a geometrical form (say, a triangle) can indifferently occur on the basis of the actual perception of a triangular(ish) individual thing (a flag, a sandwich, a leaf, a patch, etc.), but also out of the quasi-individual correlate of an image-­consciousness (a drawing), of a perceptual phantasy (an actor drawing a triangle by waving her finger in the air), or even of an act of pure phantasy (through a shape hovering in front of me in its distinctive protean fashion). Therefore, the geometrical properties of triangles and the truth pertaining to such properties hold indifferently for triangles ideated in perception, image-consciousness, perceptual phantasy, or pure phantasy. For instance, the angle sum property indifferently applies to, or is indifferently illustrated by, triangular(ish) shapes that are perceived, drawn, perceptually or

1  Husserlian Shadows in Plato’s Cave: Layers of Contingency and Fictional Variations…

7

purely fantasized. And it is precisely for this reason that the angle sum theorem is said to be an “eternal truth,” i.e., a universal and necessary truth whose validity would be granted even if there were no factually existing triangular individuals to perceive. For in Euclidian space, a triangle whose internal angles are not equal to 180° is plainly and simply an absurdity. Phenomenology too, Husserl says, has to do with pure essences and, more precisely, with pure essences of (transcendentally reduced) Erlebnisse, i.e., lived experiences. Just as the eidos “triangle” can only be ideated on the basis of triangular(ish) actual individuals or fictional quasi-individuals, the same holds for phenomenological eidê such as “perception,” “memory,” “desire,” “imagination,” “fear,” and even “lived experience” in general. According to Husserl, one can ideate or illustrate the pure essence of a lived experience – say, an act of “sense perception” – not only by accomplishing an actual individual act of sense perception, but also by fantasizing a quasi-individual one. Therefore, a fictional perception – which is not actually lived through, which has no unique position in the phenomenological time of one’s living stream, and which appears to be in conflict with every other lived experience temporally individualized in such a stream – is a perfectly acceptable example of the eidos “sense perception”. As a result, truths about the properties of such an eidos are just as “eternal” as the truths about the properties of the eidos “triangle.” For a sense perception whose object correlate is not given through adumbrations is just as absurd as a Euclidean triangle whose internal angles are not equal to 180°. The same holds for every other Erlebnis. But the bond between phantasy and eidetic science is not limited to the fact that the self-givenness of an eidos can be founded on the self-showing of fictional quasi-­ individuals. Phantasy also informs the very activity of the geometer in his search for new geometrical shapes and the discovery of their relevant properties. The geometer “operates incomparably more in phantasy than in perception,” since in phantasy he has incomparably more freedom reshaping at will the figures feigned, and in running through continuously modified possible shapings, thus in generating an immense number of new formations; a freedom opens up to him for the very first time an access to the expenses of essential possibilities with their infinite horizons of eidetic cognitions. (1977, §70)

This time, Husserl is not simply discussing the role of phantasy in general (imaginal, perceptual, pure), or the fact that, when dealing with actual individuals, eidetic sciences treat them just as fictional quasi-individuals. He is talking about the role of free phantasy and its power to produce arbitrary variations and new formations, so as to bring to appearance fictional quasi-individuals to which no previously perceived actual individual corresponds. He is talking about the power to provide the intuitive support for eidê which would have never been possible to grasp if free phantasy had not severed the bond with actual experience and factual existence, breaking the form of individuation. Thus, as Husserl aptly notes, even the geometer’s drawings are not the reproductions of externally perceived shapes, but freely fantasized shapes fixed into images.

8

C. Majolino

The situation is no different for the phenomenologist dealing with the Erlebnisse and their eidetically necessary counterparts. Since “there are also infinitely many eidetic phenomenological formations,” the phenomenologist too “can use the resource of originary givenness only to a limited extent” since “he does not have examples for all possible particular formations any more than the geometer has sketches or models at his disposal for the infinitely many kinds of solids. Here, in any case, the freedom of eidetic research also necessarily demands operating in phantasy” (1977, §70). Accordingly, free phantasy is mandatory in order to discover new and unexpected forms of lived experiences, with their relevant properties, by freely transforming actual experiences and bringing to appearance experiences that one has not actually experienced and, perhaps, will never actually experience. Thus, the phenomenologist is just like the geometer insofar as he or she operates “more in phantasy than in perception,” has the freedom to “reshape at will” his or her feigned lived experiences, and to “generate an immense number of new formations.” In the same way that geometry “attaches great value to collections of models [Modelsammlungen],” phenomenology also collects a wide array of “transformations of phantasy products” (Umgestaltung der Phantasiegegebenheiten) drawn from experience, history, art, and especially from poetry (Dichtung) (Husserl, 1977, §70, 148). Poetical fictions are the best source to modify the established empirical style and to place the phenomenologist in front of Erlebnisse never brought to appearance, manifesting a wide array of possible or impossible configurations of the self. Poetical fictions are both free and structured, unrestricted and organized, wild and consistent. They will eventually “explode” because of their inner and outer conflicts, but this always occurs after having brought to appearance some seemingly consistent quasi-individual state of affairs. The twofold conclusion of these preliminary remarks is the following: phenomenology could and should use empirical examples (ordinary or scientific). But since its aim is not empirical but eidetic, such examples have to function only as supports for actual or possible ideations. They are not relevant because of their empirical and factual status, but because of their interchangeability with pure phantasy’s fictions. They are not significant as such, but as fertilizers to foster new and free phantasy variations. Ordinary examples, because of their lack of originality, are not half as good as fictional ones; while scientific examples drawn from experiments in cognitive science, because of their inventiveness and surprising richness, are indeed as good as fictional ones as soon as their empirical validity is dropped. Poetical fictions are the best source to vary the empirical style of experience, and to put the phenomenologist in front of the appearance of Erlebnisse that no actual experience would or could have ever brought to intuitive givenness. Plato’s cave is a phenomenologically relevant poetical fiction that forces us to imagine – before it “explodes” because of its inner and outer conflicts – an unexpected figure of the self and its only-imaginable form of self-awareness.

1  Husserlian Shadows in Plato’s Cave: Layers of Contingency and Fictional Variations…

9

 epublic VII (514b–517c): A Brief Reminder R and a Neglected Detail Plato’s allegory of the cave is a literary spot that everyone knows without even having read it. Leaving aside the question of its allegorical meaning, most of the readers would probably summarize its literal content as follows: some prisoners are chained up in a cave since their birth; the only thing they can see are the shadows of, say, horse-shaped artefacts cast on a wall; the prisoners take the horse-shaped shadows as real beings, despite their being twice removed from the real horses living outside the cave; once released, the prisoners see the truth and re-establish the ontological order of things; afterwards, they try to reenter the cave and spread the truth to their fellow prisoners. What does all this have to do with self-awareness? Nothing, indeed, unless something is missing in this summary, a missing detail often neglected even by many well-informed Plato scholars.4 Having set the stage, introduced the main and the secondary characters (the prisoners, the transporters), put some relevant props in place (the wall, the parapet, the artefacts, the chains), and explained the material conditions of both the environment (light, distance) and the body of the prisoners (immobile, limited to sight and hearing), the very first moment in which Plato mentions the relationship between the prisoners and the shadows is not, as one would expect, with respect to the shadows of the artefacts carried by the transporters, but in relation to the way in which the prisoners see themselves. Here is the text: Imagine the condition of men living in a sort of cavernous chamber underground, with an entrance open to the light and a long passage all down the cave. Here they have been from childhood, chained by the leg and also by the neck, so that they cannot move and can see only what is in front of them, because the chains will not let them turn their heads. At some distance higher up is the light of a fire burning behind them; and between the prisoners and the fire is a track with a parapet built along it, like the screen at a puppet-show, which hides the performers while they show their puppets over the top. / I see, said he. / Now behind this parapet imagine persons carrying along various artificial objects including figures of men and animals in wood or stone or other materials, which project above the parapet. Naturally, some of these persons will be talking, other silent. / It is a strange picture, he said, and strange sort of prisoners. / Like ourselves, I replied; for, in the first place, what do you think they would see of themselves and of one another if not the shadows thrown by the fire-light on the wall of the cave facing them reflected by the fire from the entrance of the cavern in front of them? [τοὺς γὰρ τοιούτους πρῶτον μὲν ἑαυτῶν τε καὶ ἀλλήλων οἴει ἄν τι ἑωρακέναι ἄλλο πλὴν τὰς σκιὰς τὰς ὑπὸ τοῦ πυρὸς εἰς τὸ καταντικρὺ αὐτῶν τοῦ σπηλαίου προσπιπτούσας] / Not if all their lives they had been prevented from moving their heads. / And they would have seen as little of the objects carried past. /Of course. / Now, if they could talk to one another, would they not suppose that their words referred only to those passing shadows which they saw? / Necessarily. / And suppose their prison had an echo from the wall facing them? When one of the people crossing behind them spoke, they could only suppose that the sound came from the shadow passing before their eyes. / No

 The detail was, however, not unknown to Brunschwig (1999).

4

10

C. Majolino doubt. / In every way, then, such prisoners would recognize as reality nothing but the shadows of these things. / Inevitably (Plato., 1941, 514a2–515c3; my emphases).5

A crucial detail was missing in the first sketch of the summary: the prisoners do not only see the shadows of the artefacts, they also see – and in the first place (πρῶτον) – their own shadows! More precisely, 1. since the prisoners have been unable to move their heads all their lives, and possibly their whole bodies, the only thing they see of themselves is the shadow of their own bodies cast on the wall; and 2. since they take what they see as the only real being (τὰ ὄντα αὐτοὺς νομίζειν ἅπερ ὁρῷεν), the only real being about themselves they are aware of is nothing but the shadow of their own unseen body.

We are thus invited to see (ἰδὲ, i.e., to imagine, to figure out) prisoners that are aware of themselves and of the others (ἑαυτῶν τε καὶ ἀλλήλων) the same way they are aware of the horse-shaped statues and of every other denizens of the cave – i.e., as shadows among shadows. The prisoners see themselves in front of themselves as shadows whose differences regarding the other shadows (those of the artefacts) are, at best, differences in movement (the shadows of the artefacts enter and exit the scene of the wall, the prisoners’ shadows stay in place) and maybe of size and intensity (being closer to the fire, which stands far above the prisoners, the shadows of the artefacts are likely to look taller, bigger, and more blurred than the shadows of the prisoners themselves; and the sounds uttered by the prisoners are maybe perceived as louder than the ones uttered by the transporters and carried by echo). Thus, in its opening lines, Plato’s poetical fiction shows that the prisoners are victims of a twofold illusion, regarding the true nature of things and themselves.6

 Twofold Challenge: Plato’s Poetical Fiction and Husserl’s A Varieties of Self-Awareness My contention is that, to put it in Husserl’s terms, because of the originality of its new configuration (Originalität der Neugestaltung), the abundance of its details (der Fülle der Einzelzüge), and its narrative coherence (der Lückenlosigkeit der Motivation), Plato’s fictional poetry of the prisoners in the cave throws a twofold challenge to Husserl’s eidetic-transcendental phenomenology.

 I use here Cornford’s 1941 translation, only with some minor modifications.  Breaking the first illusion signifies knowing the world as it is, both in its becoming and true being, and therefore discovering the origin of the illusion itself; breaking the second signifies knowing oneself, and therefore realizing that one is not a shadow among shadows, not even a thing among things. Only in this way could the freed prisoner finally decide to go back to the cave to free other prisoners. Here I will not provide any interpretation of this allegory in the wake of those mapped, for instance, by Blumenberg (1998). 5 6

1  Husserlian Shadows in Plato’s Cave: Layers of Contingency and Fictional Variations…

11

1. Is it possible to imagine a self who is aware of itself beyond the difference between self-awareness and object-awareness, as a shadow among shadows? Is a self that is aware of itself only as the seen shadow of its own otherwise unseen body only a verbal fiction – something that could merely be said – or is it an object of a possible intuition, something that could be given, though only provisionally in imagination? 2. Plato’s Socrates says that the strange prisoners are “like ourselves” (ὀμοίους ἠμῖν) (515c6). If we leave aside the specifically allegoric sense of this claim, one could still ask if and to what extent the fictional prisoners, with their own putative shadow-selves, are to be understood as variations of our selves. What does our factual self – i.e., the self of those who are actually asked to imagine seeing the prisoners – share with the fictional self of such imagined prisoners? If they are both contingent examples of the same eidos “self,” what invariant form of self-awareness do they share, and at what point do they diverge? None of these challenges would make sense outside the limits of the idiosyncratic aspects of Husserl’s phenomenology.

Variation, Self, and Self-Awareness In order to respond to both questions, we should first carry out “self-variation” (Selbstvariation).7 We have to imagine our-selves not simply as spectators, i.e., as external observers looking at fictional prisoners in a fictional cave from above, but as if we were such prisoners, as if we were experiencing and constituting our surrounding world and our-selves within the boundaries stipulated by Plato’s poetical fiction. If we follow Husserl’s lead, this process of self-variation follows two steps. 1. Since I am asked to imagine myself as a subject who sees shadows, hears echoes, has beliefs, and talks about what he or she sees or hears, what I fantasize are the objects of which I am intentionally aware: shadows, echoes, real beings, etc. While doing this, I also fantasize myself as being otherwise than I actually am, as performing acts that I am not performing, i.e., as seeing, hearing, believing, etc. In this process I finally posit the “sameness” between the factual self that I actually am (i.e., the one who is fantasizing being a prisoner while reading a copy of Plato’s Republic) and the fictional self that I imagine myself to be. As Husserl puts it: If, for example, I yield to the phantasy that I undertook a trip to Mars and had there lived experiences similar to Gullivers’s, then these fictional lived experiences of consciousness would belong to me, though as empty phantasies. The fictional world is a correlate of a fictional self, which, however, is fantasized as the same [dasselbe] as my actual self. Thus, it is precisely through the relation to the actual pure self that the idea not only of the world

 On this point, see De Santis (2020).

7

12

C. Majolino actually posited by me but also of each and every possible and imaginable world as a world for this pure self, is firmly delimited. (1952, 120)

2. The array of fictional lived experiences belonging to my actual self as empty phantasies now appears as a “variation of my real life, which I am apodictically certain of” (1973, 152). Thus, “I am absolutely given to myself with this state of presence,” yet as soon as I “concordantly fantasize myself as the subject of another life, in evident conflict with my experience […] I admittedly also have a phantasy-self as the subject of a phantasy life” (152–153, my emphasis).8 In this process, “my being-such-and-such is always contingent, insofar as I could fictionally transform it and imagine myself as experiencing something else; that the experience that is so would be another” (151). Such a set of transformations reveals some of the structural features of the concrete essence “subjectivity” of which my conflicting factual actual-self and my fictional-self are contingent and arbitrary examples. Given this necessary point of departure, the first eidetic feature that my factual and fictional selves have to contingently exemplify necessarily corresponds to the deepest layer of conscious life as such. Husserl sometimes calls it “the streaming” (das Strömen) or “the experiencing” (das Erleben): an ego-less and anonymous “self,” incessant and continuous, without beginning or end: an absolute flow of unbroken unity, constituted through the transversal “intentionality” of temporality itself, in which existing and showing itself are inseparable. This “original appearing” (originäre Erscheinen) (1969, 368) is sometimes dubbed by Husserl “absolute self-­ awareness.” And since “being a subject is being conscious in the mode of being conscious of one’s self” (Subjektsein ist, in der Weise seiner selbst bewusst zu sein, zu sein) (1973, 151), both selves – factual and fictional – cannot but be arbitrary examples of such an absolutely self-aware subject. If I didn’t posit my fictional self as an absolutely self-aware, streaming consciousness, I wouldn’t be able to imagine anything. But the absolute flow has also its waves, as it were. The “streaming,” is indeed “a single flow that breaks down into many flows” (einen einzigen Fluss, der in viele Flüsse zerfällt), into this or that individual “stream” (der Ström) (1973, 373). It is a multiplicity of individual “lived experiences” (die Erlebnisse), fleeting and discrete, coming to be and passing away, showing themselves within the internal streaming of time consciousness. Such “waves,” Husserl now says, “could only be viewed” (auf das wir nur hisehen; dem wir nur zusehen können) (368) through a distinctive form of longitudinal intentionality, an inner view, also  called “reflection”. The merely virtual multiplicity of the streaming now appears as diffracted into an actual multiplicity of streams, the continuous rhythm of conscious life is broken into manifold discrete pulses (Puls):

 See also Husserl 1973, 152–153.

8

1  Husserlian Shadows in Plato’s Cave: Layers of Contingency and Fictional Variations…

13

In reflection we find a single flow that breaks down into many flows [einen einzigen Fluss, der in viele Flüsse zerfällt]; yet the many flows possess a kind of unity that permits us to speak of one flow. (373)

Though often dubbed by many commentators as “reflexive,” this second mode of self-awareness in which the virtual multiplicity of the streaming shows itself as an actual multiplicity of streams – i.e., a multiplicity of individual cogitationes (acts of perception, desire, imagination, etc.), each with its own ego-pole and its correlative intentional cogitatatum – has no proper name in Husserl’s texts. However, since the “self” of which one is aware in this very specific case is always the appearing and disappearing pole of a relation (both as the object-pole of a reflexive grasping and as the ego-pole of the reflected act), it is safe to call it “relative self-awareness” as opposed to the “absolute self-awareness” of the streaming “self.” The articulation between these two moments is spelled out by Husserl in the following terms: I grasp myself, and grasp myself in apodictic evidence. The consciousness in which I am conscious of myself is my consciousness, and concretely seized consciousness of myself and myself (also in full concretion) is identical. To be a subject is to be conscious in the mode of being conscious of oneself [= absolute self-awareness]. If I grasp myself in reflection, then I grasp my identical I as the pole of my life, or I grasp myself, proceeding from life to life, always reflecting anew, as an identical unity and my life itself as unity of a multiform stream and so on [= relative self-awareness]. In this process, my being-such-and-­ such is always contingent, insofar as I could fictionally transform it and imagine myself as experiencing something else; that the experience that is so would be another. (1973, 151; my emphasis)

The closing line of this quote is crucial for our purpose and needs us to pause.

Martians, Giants, and Savvy Horses Let us imagine ourselves as traveling to Mars, as in Kurd Lasswitz’s science-fiction novel Auf zwei Planeten (1897),9 or as having experiences as described by Jonathan Swift’s Gullivers’s Travels (2005). In all these cases, (1) I am actually imagining myself as experiencing something that I am not actually experiencing. (2) Such a performance of imagination is not an act of unrestricted free fantasy, since what I am imagining is bound to and steered by the linguistic stipulations of a coherent, detailed, and rich poetical fiction prescribing what I actually have to imagine and how I should actually imagine it. (3) By imagining myself as if I were on Mars, as if I were Gulliver or a Houyhnhnm, I am not simply experiencing one conflict between my factual and my fictional self, but I am fictionally transforming my factual self according to the sets of rules established by Lasswitz’s or Swift’s novels. (4) In this process, each set of rules reveals a different layer of contingency with respect to my own factual self.

 Husserl refers to Lasswitz repeatedly in his letters (1994, 1,5, 5:84) and elsewhere (1956, 384).

9

14

C. Majolino

If I were to imagine myself travelling to Mars according to the stipulations of Lasswitz’s novel, the fictional transformations would be limited to the objects I would feign to see (canals, a desert of red dust, unknown technological devices), the events I would imagine witnessing (the war between Martians and Earthlings), or the actions I would imagine myself performing (engaging in the war of independence). My factual and fictional selves would still be examples of the same concrete essence: they would both be personal, human, and psycho-physical beings, absolutely and relatively aware of their streaming conscious life and manifold rising waves, provided with the same type of body etc. In this case, the contingency revealed by the conflict between my factual and fictional self would simply affect the places, objects, and events that I actually see and the actions I actually perform, not the very structure of my own selfhood. By contrast, if I were to imagine myself experiencing the world as a giant like Gulliver or as a savvy horse like a Houyhnhnm, the contingency of my factual self would reveal itself differently. In the case of Gulliver, my factual self and my fictional self would still be “the same”, as contingent examples of a personal human being having a certain body and being absolutely and relatively aware of his or her streaming life in its various streams (perceiving, imagining, think etc.). As a result, in order to fictionally imagine myself according to Swift’s stipulations, I should simply vary the contingent experiences I am having with their correlative objects (I am actually seeing these books on my desk, but I imagine myself as seeing a vast shore or an abandoned boat). In order to imagine these things seen as Gulliver would have seen them, I should also imaginarily vary the contingent size of my own body (I am of average height, and act and see things accordingly, but I imagine myself as tall as a giant). Beyond these two variations, every other feature of my own subjective life, as well as the whole appearing style of my own surrounding world, would remain utterly unchanged. What reveals itself as contingent now is a certain set of accidental features of my own body. But if I were to imagine myself as the member of a community of intelligent talking horses, the nature of my own body would reveal itself in all its contingency. My factual actual-self and my fictional Houyhnhnm-self would still be the same, but they would radically differ regarding their manner of embodiment. Thus, a further effort is required to bridge the gap between these different modes of embodied experience. Through this additional gap, Swift’s new rules of fictional transformation reveal a new layer of contingency proper to my own factual self.10

 It should be readily apparent that the problem here is not that of the “how is it like to be a bat” (how does a factual animal of the order Chiroptera experience its surrounding world), but rather how fictional transformations of oneself guided by the linguistic stipulations of a poetical fiction might end up revealing the various layers of contingency of one’s own selfhood. 10

1  Husserlian Shadows in Plato’s Cave: Layers of Contingency and Fictional Variations…

15

Conscious Prisoners Let us now turn back to the cave and its unusual denizens. On the basis of what we have just explained regarding the layers of contingency revealed in the process of Husserl’s self-variation, we are now in a better position to see the actual challenge represented by Plato’s distinctive poetical fiction. The problem of imagining oneself as a prisoner described by Plato in Book VII of the Republic is much more difficult than the problems raised by Lasswitz’s earthlings  in Mars or Swift’s oversized human beings and equine-bodied, intelligent creatures. If I follow Plato’s stipulations, I must fictionally transform myself so that not only intentional objects appear as contingent (I am currently seeing some books on the table, I imagine myself as seeing some shadows cast on a wall), or what I am absolutely and relatively self-aware of (despite my own streaming and its rising waves, I feign myself to be living another conscious life with its manifold conscious acts). In question is the very possibility of being aware of myself as something structurally different from any of the objects I am intentionally aware of in my surrounding world. But how far can we actually go in imagining ourselves as if we were Plato’s fictional prisoners with their own shadowy self-awareness, as seen shadows of unseen bodies? Does the conflict generated by Plato’s poetical fiction reveal a further layer of contingency of our factual self, or is Plato’s requirement only an empty prescription, something that could be said, but not really imagined? This is precisely what we should try to establish now. As Husserl explains, since the prisoners are conscious beings with their own lived experiences, our fantasized prisoner-self cannot but be imagined as absolutely self-aware of one ongoing unique conscious life, and as relatively self-aware of his or her manifold intentional lived experiences while being intentionally aware of some objects in the doxic modality of the belief. Without this basic structural sameness between the factual and the fictional streaming self, and the factual and fictional selves of the streams, it would be impossible to imagine anything whatsoever. Accordingly, Plato’s fictional prisoners are not unlike Lasswitz’s earthlings and Swift’s oversized or equine-bodied persons. They are, to speak like Socrates, “like ourselves”.

Habitual Prisoners But the prisoners do not simply have intentional experiences with their absolute and relative modes of self-awareness, fleeting or recurring (mis)perceptions and (false) beliefs about something. According to Plato’s set of rules, they also have stable convictions and long-term opinions about their surrounding world and about themselves: convictions and opinions motivated by and built upon previous convictions and opinions, strengthened by the concordant course of their present experience, the

16

C. Majolino

coherent recollection of past events, and the confirmed expectations of future ones. What Plato’s prisoners see is not a random array of changing events, something they just believe to be real in a moment and cease to believe in another. Rather, to the prisoners, the surrounding world of the cave appears as a fully coherent environment of relatively regular events, coming into view in similar circumstances and disappearing in a more or less foreseeable way. At a certain point in the dialogue, Plato explains that the prisoners may have even played guessing games, awarding their fellow prisoners a prize for having correctly remembered the order in which the shadows have appeared and anticipating their future appearances (see Plato., 1941, 516c8-d2).11 Essential to Plato’s poetical fiction is the fact that the prisoners undergo a radical change after their release. Once freed from their chains, they break their previous habits: they struggle, endure the clash between conflicting convictions, doubt, hesitate, waver, change their minds, and eventually turn  themselves into someone new (see Plato., 1941, 515c4-d7). Put in Husserl’s terms, the prisoners are “subjects of persistent convictions” (bleibende Überzeugungen) who change their minds because the progress of actual experience shows the surrounding world as being different from what it used or seemed to be (1952, 194). The prisoners’ acts of seeing, hearing, believing, etc. have to be fantasized as having been experienced not only one-time (einmalig), in their immanent and unrepeatable singularity, but for the first time (erstmalig) and time and again (immer wieder), as occurring within the unity of a series, motivating a sequence of enduring creeds of lasting (dauernde) validity, kept alive throughout the course of immanent time, and correlated to the persistence of a self-consistent “habitual theme” with its own familiar style of appearance (311). Accordingly, my factual actual-self and my fictional prisoner-self appear as contingent examples of the concrete essence of subjectivity that Husserl calls “habitual” or “position-taking self” (stellungnehmende Ich). As Husserl writes in one of his manuscripts: The I pole is not me, I am in my convictions. I maintain my one and identical self, my ideal understanding self, if I can always and securely strive towards the unity of a total conviction. (1909–1926, 34b)

It is only as a contingent example of a position taking self that my fantasized prisoner-­self can hold convictions, entertain opinions, that he or she can remain “unchanged” (unverändert) and “true” (treue) to him or herself, until the course of his or her experience brings out compelling motives to “change” (ändern), forcing himself or herself to “become someone else” (sich ein anderer werden) (1952, 113). For at least to some extent, “to change conviction is to change ‘oneself’” (die Überzeugung ändern ist “sich” ändern) (311).

 Due to space constraints, I will have to neglect all the “personalistic” aspects of Plato’s picture, which include the communicative interaction among prisoners who should constitute a community of persons; their common reference to a spiritual surrounding world, whose relevant objects are endowed with practical-axiological predicates; and the problems related to the personal selfawareness of each prisoner. 11

1  Husserlian Shadows in Plato’s Cave: Layers of Contingency and Fictional Variations…

17

What mode of self-awareness belongs to the distinctive self-awareness of any habitual position-taking self? Husserl doesn’t seem to have chosen any definitive name for this. In one of his marginalia to Natorp’s Allgemeine Psychologie (quoted in Kern [1964, 293]), however, he makes a suggestion: in such specific cases, “self-­ awareness would be ultimately the concordance of the ‘thinking’ consciousness” (Selbstbewusstsein wäre also letztlich Einstimmigkeit des “denkenden” Bewusstseins). For lack of better words, one could thus say that the fictional prisoners – insofar as they are varieties of our-selves as subjects of persistent though not unchangeable views – are concordantly-self-aware. Although the prisoners are, again, “like ourselves”, there is a difference between this concordant self-awareness, on the one hand, and the absolute and relative ones discussed in the previous sections. The latter are by eidetic necessity implied in every self-variation (and therefore cannot be removed), while the former is only an eidetic possibility (and therefore rests on the freedom of the fantasizing subject). It is an eidetic absurdity to imagine myself otherwise than I factually am but not as absolutely or relatively aware of myself, just as impossible as it is to represent a triangle in a Euclidean space whose internal angles are not equal to 180°. I can imagine myself as an earthling on Mars, as Gulliver, as a Houyhnhnm, or as a prisoner in Plato’s cave, but not as a consciousness-less being. By contrast, it is not absurd to imagine myself otherwise than I factually am but not as a habitual position-taking self concordantly aware of myself.12 Thus, if my factual actual-self and my fictional prisoner-self conflict as contingent examples of a position-taking self, it is only because I decide to comply with Plato’s stipulations, not because it would be impossible to do otherwise.

Human Prisoners Until now we have imagined our fictional prisoner-selves as being “like ourselves” at least in three respects: as varieties of our actual selves qua absolute, relative, and habitual subjects who are absolutely, relatively, and concordantly aware of themselves. Plato’s poetical fiction, however, is more demanding. For it not only requires that we imagine ourselves as subjects who see and have constant beliefs about some objects, appearing and disappearing more or less regularly in certain given circumstances, but it also demands that we imagine ourselves as constantly believing that some of these objects are “ourselves.” The prisoners, Plato says, see the shadows of their unseen living bodies and are convinced that they are such shadows. What further fictional transformations of our factual self are needed in order to comply with this requirement?  An example of a fictional character devoid of concordant self-awareness is Italo Calvino’s Gurdulù, appearing in the novel Il cavaliere inesistente (1959). Gurdulù is a peasant who has no lasting position takings, no enduring convictions, whose thoughts and behaviors constantly shift in parallel with the things he sees (a pear tree, a duck, a frog) or the people he meets (Charlemagne). 12

18

C. Majolino

From the Husserlian standpoint, once we start talking of subjects that are “living bodies” (not just of absolute subjects, ego-poles, habitual subjects) correlated to “real things” (not just to intentional objects in general or coherently unfolding events), we introduce a new variety of subjectivity. This new concrete essence is called by Husserl the “real ensouled subject” (real seelische Subjekt) (1952, 120), the “embodied-ensouled subject” (leiblich-seelisch Subjekt) (143), the “psycho-­ physical subject” (psychophysischen Subjekt) (144), or the “animal subject” (animalische Subjekte) (121). Some explanation is needed. A “real” embodied-animated subject is “a real unity in that, as unity of psychic life, it is joined with the living body as unity of the bodily stream of being, which for its part is a member of nature [Glied der Natur]” (1952, 139). It is, Husserl adds, a “natural reality [Naturrealität]” which is causally related to every other natural reality thanks to its very embodiment (126) and undergoing regular changes accordingly (143). It is a psychic being “connected in a real way with its respective human or animal living body” and making up “the substantial-real double being: human or brute, i.e. animal” (120). The specific difference between “human self” (Ich-­ Mensch) (93) and the “brute” lies in the possibility of a distinctive form of self-­ awareness called “ascriptive” (zuschreibende) “self-awareness” (121). A human self is in fact a “concrete unity of a living body and a soul” (139) experiencing its dual embodied-animated nature in the mode of the “having” (haben), i.e., as being able to ascribe to himself or herself all of his or her conscious states grasped in “self-­ perception” (erfasst in “Selbstwahrnehmung”) (93–94). As an example, if able to speak a language endowed with first personal pronouns (Ich-Rede), a “human self” could refer to himself or herself by saying “I am not my living body, I have my living body, I am not a soul, I have a soul” (94); he or she would say: I have thoughts, feelings, dispositions, leanings, qualities, flaws, but also I have strong muscles, short size, heavy weight, pale complexion, dirty hands, etc. (94–95).13 A real human subject is therefore a natural being constituting its “self” as having not only an ongoing psychic life of persistent convictions causally connected with a “natural” living body of persisting material properties, but also a living body causally interacting with a “natural” environment.14 A “non-real” embodied-animated human subject, putatively capable of ascriptive self-awareness but not causally engaged with surrounding world, is nothing but a “ghost” (Gespenst). In fact, “even a ghost has necessarily its ghostly living body  The linguistic self-ascription exceeds the pre-linguistic self-awareness to which Husserl is referring. Nonetheless, although they have an equine-body, the Houyhnhnm are still varieties of “human selves,” precisely because Swift stipulates that they have to be imagined as being able to ascribe to themselves bodily as well as psychic properties. 14  The Ich-Mensch is not the homo sapiens, although, conversely, the homo sapiens is a factual example of Ich-Mensch. Whether other non-human animals are also factual examples of IchMenschen is a question that only the empirical sciences could settle. Additionally, in Husserl’s account, nothing is said about the features of the Ich-Mensch’s living body, its sensory organs, shape, limbs, biology, etc. The four-armed, four-legged, two-sexed, roundish bodied, and androgynous creature described in Plato’s Symposium (2008, 189c2–193d5) is just as much an Ich-Mensch as Socrates. 13

1  Husserlian Shadows in Plato’s Cave: Layers of Contingency and Fictional Variations…

19

[Selbst das Gespenst hat notwendig seinen Gespensterleib]” (1952, 94). However, contrary to a real human subject, the juncture between the “soul” and the “body” of a ghostly human self is not causal. It is no more causal than the relation between the ghost’s body and its natural surrounding world. Hence, devoid of material properties and causally inert, the ghostly body and the whole ghost fail to be “real,” despite the reality of his or her psychic life granted by the persistence of a position-­ taking self.

 hostly Prisoners, or: Are Plato’s Prisoners Real Humans G After All? According to Plato’s stipulations, the fictional prisoners ascribe to themselves qualities and properties, both psychic and bodily, and therefore need to be imagined as contingent examples of human selves. The question arises, however, whether they have to be imagined as real human selves. If we follow Husserl’s lead, the only necessary and sufficient condition for the living body of an ensouled “human self” to be actually constituted as real, and therefore inscribed in the causal network of his or her surrounding world, is the presence of localized sensations (1952, 144). Only if this fundamental presupposition is met can other distinctive features of a subjective living body, such as its being the organ of the will or the seat of free movements, be eventually constituted (151). We should now ask whether Plato’s poetical fiction requires that we imagine our human fictional prisoner-self as experiencing localized sensations the way that our human, factual, and actual human self does. There are many reasons to doubt it. Let us remind ourselves of the multiple bodily impairments suffered by the prisoners drawn, directly or indirectly, from Plato’s description: –– an impairment of the sense of view (the prisoners can see only in front of themselves and cannot see their own body); –– an impairment of the sense of local movement (they cannot move their own body to further explore their environment or the sensible objects they perceive); –– an impairment of the sense of touch (each part of their body is constantly in touch with its shackles, but none can touch other parts of the body); –– an impairment of the sense of pain (only when their “normal” bodily habits are broken can the prisoners be said to endure some physical suffering). We might think that all these impairments require that the body of the prisoners be imagined as a severely limited version of our own real human body. But at a closer look, we realize that Plato’s stipulations do not merely force us to imagine our fictional self as provided with a living body of limited powers. They plainly and simply prevent us from imagining our fictional selves as being able to constitute themselves as endowed with real, full-fledged, living bodies casually interacting

20

C. Majolino

with the causally endowed environment. Surprisingly enough, all these limitations end up preventing our fictional selves from constituting themselves as real psycho-­ physical selves. As Husserl insists, the presence of a multiplicity of localized sensations is only possible by constituting the unity of one living body, experienced as a whole and manifesting itself as a unique field of localization within a causal network of conditionality (1952, 151). Such a unity of the manifold loci of sensation constituting our living body, as Husserl explains several times, can only be constituted if there is a sense of touch mapping the different spots where localized sensations are actually experienced, telling the difference between, say, an unsensitive chain, a sensitive leg, a painful eye, and an itchy finger, and sensing the togetherness of the latter as belonging to the same subjective body. As Husserl puts it, “a living body becomes a living body only by incorporating tactile sensations,” i.e., “localizing sensations qua sensations” (151). The constitution of the living body can only occur if there is such an incorporation of visual sensations, identifying the locus of what is seen and the locus of what is sensed, thus manifesting other persistent properties constituting a real psycho-physical subject like a human self and generating the idea of a sensing thing which ‘has’ and which can have under certain circumstances, certain sensations (sensations of touch, pressure, warmth, coldness, pain etc.) and, in particular, have them as localized in itself primarily and properly. (151).

Thus, if the constitution of a living body goes as far as the incorporation of tactile sensations goes, then even if the prisoners had more freedom in their movements, even if they saw more of their own bodies, because of their tactile and affective impairment they would still not be able to constitute a full-blown living body to be aware of as their “own” living body: A subject whose only sense was the sense of vision could not at all have an appearing living body; in the play of kinaesthetic motivations (which he could not apprehend bodily) this subject would have appearances of things, he would see real things. It cannot be said that this subject who only sees his body, for its specific distinctive feature as body would be lacking him, and even the free movement of this “body” which goes hand in hand with the freedom of the kinaesthetic processes would not make it a body. In that case, it would only be as if the ego, in unity with its freedom in the kinaesthetic could immediately and freely move the material thing, living body. The body as such can be constituted originally only in touching and in everything that is localized with the sensations of touch. (Husserl, 1952, 150)

If this is the case, it is not even correct to say that the impaired prisoners have a form of bodily self-awareness like our own. Our fictional prisoner-self would have visual sensations appearing from a specific point of view, but it would definitively have no awareness of itself as a real ensouled body, a self-constituted body standing as the zero point of orientation in a space that could freely be explored. If I imagine myself as Lasswitz’s earthling in Mars, my fictional self would be that of a real human position-taking self whose body is like my own actual body, i.e., constituted as part of a fictional causal network of things and events; the same would hold if I imagined myself as Swift’s Gulliver, though my fictional body would differ in size from my factual one. Slightly more complicated would be the case if I were to imagine

1  Husserlian Shadows in Plato’s Cave: Layers of Contingency and Fictional Variations…

21

myself as one of Swift’s Houyhnhnms, although my fictional self would still be that of a real, position-taking, and human self inscribed in a fictionally real natural world.15 But if I wanted to imagine myself as one of Plato’s prisoners, the conflict between my factual actual-self and my fictional prisoner-self would be far deeper, since the latter, unlike the former, would be utterly incapable of constituting his or her own living body as a real one. Hence the following striking conclusion, which is perfectly in line with Plato’s requirements: as “human selves” the fictional prisoners have to be imagined as capable of ascriptive self-awareness, bodily and psychic; but because of their manifold bodily impairments, they are unable to constitute a real living body to be aware of.

Ghostly Human Prisoners The “psychic life” of my prisoner-self can be fully imagined as real, i.e., as a conscious, intentional, motivational unity of persistent convictions that is absolutely, relatively, and consistently self-aware. But his or her “living body” cannot be imagined in the same way, i.e., as constituting “a unity of permanent properties with respect to related circumstances” (Husserl, 1952, 136). The prisoners are not aware of their own bodies as being soft or hard, warm or cold, painful or pleasant, nor as showing themselves as substrates of material properties changing in a distinctive way whenever certain circumstances occur or whenever some causal interaction with other substrates of material properties takes place. Unlike the body of our factual actual-self, the body of our fictional prisoner-self would be nothing but the subjective body of a ghost. Husserl writes: A ghost is characterized by the fact that its body is a pure “spatial phantom,” with no material properties at all, which, instead, insofar as they do somehow co-appear, are consciously stricken out and are characterized as unrealities. (95)

It is a ghostly body, lived through as an absolutely psychic here-now, unmoved and unmoving, corresponding to the viewpoint of visual and eventually auditory intentional acts; at best, it is filled with some sensible determinations that are not subjectively localized  – a body which is utterly ineffective with respect to its causal environment and which has no causal relation with the psychic unity of persistent convictions. What kind of surrounding world could be constituted by the conscious being, intentional life, and persistent convictions of a ghostly and embodied human self? This could be a world in which events happen with some regularity, coming and

 The way in which the fictional equine-body of a Houyhnhnm might constitute itself as the unity of a vast field of localized sensations depends on the manner in which one imagines its physiology. However, the fact that the Houyhnhnm’s living body is constituted as a real living body by incorporating tactile sensations is out of the question. 15

22

C. Majolino

going, appearing and disappearing from sight, even varying their shapes or colors – but it could not be a real, natural world of causal intertwinements. Ghostly bodies can only constitute themselves by constituting a surrounding phantom world. As long as their living bodies are still un-constituted, what the prisoners see are “pure visual spatial phantoms” (pure visuelle räumliche Phantome), i.e., “forms fulfilled purely by color, not only without relation to the tactual and the other data of the other senses, but also without any relation to the moments of ‘materiality’ and thereby to any real-causal determinations” (Husserl, 1952, 22). Material things are constituted through the experience of their conditional interaction with the environment, revealing the presence of material properties (hardness, softness, flexibility, resilience, elasticity, etc.); but our prisoner-self does not see or experience any causal interaction. Material things are also constituted throughout a perceptual continuum in which the appearance of a manifold of sensibly-­filled spatial determinations is naturally integrated in a continuous synthesis, so that the unity of one and the same thing appears through and beyond the multiplicity of its appearances and adumbrations. Our prisoner-self cannot go beyond appearances and cannot explore the horizons of the spatial objects the way the living body does; he or she cannot follow the chain of Abschattungen, fulfil empty intentions, or establish a correlation between the awareness of the kinaesthetic movements themselves and the sensations representing the properties of the perceived object. It is therefore not entirely correct to say that our fictional prisoner-self is seeing “shadows.” For a shadow is a real natural phenomenon. It is only after the prisoners are released – after they change, constitute their own living body, and begin constituting a natural world with causes and effects (the light causes the shadow) – that the correlates of their old experience will properly be understood, in retrospect, as “shadows.” But as long as my fictional living body is still un-constituted and unaware of itself qua living body, what hovers in front of my fictional prisoner-self is just a series visual objects: located in space, appearing for a certain time, displaying some geometrical shapes and various shades of color. But, as we have seen, these are not material things because: (1) material things are constituted through the experience of their conditional interaction with a material environment, revealing the existence of causal relations and manifesting the presence of material properties (hardness, softness, flexibility, resilience, elasticity, etc.); and (2) the distinctive spatiality of a material things is constituted throughout a perceptual continuum in which the appearance of manifold sensibly-filled spatial determinations is integrated in a continuous synthesis, so that the unity of one and the same thing appears through and beyond the multiplicity of its appearances. None of these conditions is met in the cave. Therefore, my fictional prisoner-self does not see any causal interaction and cannot go beyond the appearances. Although my fictional prisoner-self does not see “shadows” in any naturalistic sense, the word “shadows” (Schatten) is nonetheless perfectly fit to name a series of one-sided “adumbrations” (Abschattungen) failing to reveal the properties of a real perceptual thing. Husserl has another name for this, a “spatial phantom” (Raumphantome), which he describes as

1  Husserlian Shadows in Plato’s Cave: Layers of Contingency and Fictional Variations…

23

a pure visual spatial phantom (a form fulfilled purely by color, not only without relation to the tactual and the other data of the other senses, but also without any relation to the moments of ‘materiality’ and thereby to any real-causal determinations) […] a tonal spatial phantom, appearing with a determinate orientation, proceeding from a certain position in space, resounding through the space, etc. (1952, 22)

Shadows (and echoes) are spatial phantoms. This is the only stuff of which the world of the cave is made, since the living bodies of its “human” denizens are constituted as the bodies of ghosts, not as parts of a natural surrounding world.

Shadow Self-Awareness for Ghostly Human Prisoners We finally see how Husserl’s idiosyncratic conceptuality meets the twofold challenge of Plato’s cave. But let us first measure the ground covered so far. By following all the way through the rules set by Plato’s distinctive poetical fiction, we have carried out a series of imaginary self-variations, which have both transformed our own factual actual-self together with its varieties of self-awareness and revealed its various layers of contingency in a unique way. We have discovered that Plato’s prisoners are indeed “like ourselves” insofar as my actual factual-self and my fictional prisoner-self are both contingent varieties of: (1) conscious subjects – absolutely aware of their own streaming life; (2) ego subjects of intentional acts – relatively aware of their experiencing and of themselves as emerging poles of such experiencing; (3) habitual subjects of lasting opinions – concordantly aware of their more or less coherent life of position-takings as correlated to the intentional awareness of a more or less consistently unfolding world; (4) ensouled-embodied human subjects – ascriptively aware of their dual nature: not only of their conscious life, manifold lived experiences, and lasting convictions, but also of some of their bodily features, properties, capabilities, however fleeting and enduring. Features (1) and (2) are eidetic necessities: they are essential conditions of imagining oneself otherwise. Features (3) and (4) are eidetic possibilities of selfhood exemplified only because we decide to comply with Plato’s stipulations. Regarding these four eidetic features, the conflict between my actual factual-self and my fictional prisoner-self always occurs within the boundaries of the same concrete essence of which they are both contingent examples. But a deeper conflict arises regarding the nature of the prisoners’ human selfhood as it is implied by their severe bodily impairments. In this regard, Plato’s prisoners are no longer “like ourselves” precisely because of the irreality of their un-constituted living body. Thus, strange as it might seem, there is less of a difference between my factual actual-self and my fictional self when I imagine myself as one of Swift’s savvy horses than there is if I fictionally see myself as one of Plato’s prisoners. For, despite his or her equine appearance, the Houyhnhnm is still a real

24

C. Majolino

ensouled-embodied human subject, constituting his or her own living body as part of a natural world and causally interacting with the latter. The embodied-ensouled structure of the prisoners, by contrast, is that of the irreal (un-constituted, causally inert) body of a real (constituted, motivationally position-taking) soul: not that of a disembodied spectator but that of a spectator with a ghostly body. A spectator incapable of exploring his or her surrounding space, of seeing anything but objective spatial phantoms, i.e., “shadows” in the strict phenomenological sense, and, therefore, of being aware of his or her own embodiment as a ghostly subjective phantom. It should be clear now why this new conflict between my factual actual-self and my fictional prisoner-self is deeper than the others. Because my factual actual-self, despite all its manifold layers of contingency, does not reveal itself in any meaningful sense as a contingent variety of an (5) ensouled-embodied human ghostly subject – shadowy aware of his or her own body only as a visual phantom, i.e., as a distinctive shadow among shadows. In sum, if we take Plato’s poetical fiction not just as a mere story, as a set of words to be understood, but as a binding set of rules to be followed to test Husserl’s conceptuality, to steer our free phantasy, to operate a self-variation, and to make the effort to imagine ourselves not only as we are not, but also as we could never possibly be, then three outcomes could be gathered. First, we could encounter what only a poetical fiction could make manifest, i.e., the figure of a human ghost who could only be aware of his or her bodily self through the visual experience of a phantom, aware of himself or herself only as a strange shadow among shadows. Such a fiction could not only play an allegorical role for philosophical purposes, as Plato wanted,16 but could also be part of Husserl’s much wanted phenomenological “Modelsammlung” of the self. By trying to imagine ourselves all the way through as Plato’s prisoners, we also realize the extent to which Husserl’s self-variation itself, guided by the rules of a poetical fiction, also appears as a variety of self-awareness. A new variety of self-awareness by means of which, through the manifold conflicts between the factual and fictional self, we become fictionally aware of the manifold layers of contingency of which we are factual examples – but also of the structural possibilities of selfhood from which our own contingency is removed. Though certainly not ecumenic, syncretic, and interdisciplinary, these outcomes, drawn from Husserl’s idiosyncratic conceptuality, strike me as philosophically important.

 I promised that I would not venture into any putatively “phenomenological” interpretation of the allegorical meaning of Plato’s cave. Let me note, however, that it is only once they are freed from their ghostly embodiment that the prisoners’ human selves become real. The way out of the cave is thus the path from the static vision of moving shadows to talk about (among which one finds the shadow of oneself) to the moving vision of things to explore, up to the moving vision of the ideas, and finally of the idea of the good to be motivated by in one’s action. A path that is only possible thanks to constitution of a real human body: a body experienced in localized sensations and pain, fully embedded in a natural surrounding world, able to explore such environment by freely moving, following the track from the effects to their causes, etc. The path towards the ideas can only be taken by a real ensouled-embodied human self. 16

1  Husserlian Shadows in Plato’s Cave: Layers of Contingency and Fictional Variations…

25

References Blumenberg, H. (1998). Höhlenausgänge. Suhrkamp. Brunschwig, J. (1999). Un détail négligé dans la caverne de Platon. In L. Bove (Ed.), La recta ratio. Criticiste et Spinoziste ? Hommage en l’honneur de Bernard Rousset (pp.  65–76). Presses Universitaires Paris-Sorbonne. Calvino, I. (1959). Il cavaliere inesistente. Garzanti. De Santis, D. (2020). ‘Self-variation’: A problem of method in Husserl’s phenomenology. Husserl Studies, 36(3), 1–15. Husserl, E. (1909–1926). Manuscript A VI 30. Psychologie (Lehre von der Intentionalität). Husserl, E. (1952). Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution. M.  Biemel (Ed.),. Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, E. (1956). Erste Philosophie (1923/4). Erste Teil: Kritische Ideengeschichte. R. Boehm (Ed.),. Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, E. (1969). Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstesens (1893–1917). R. Boehm (Ed.),. Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, E. (1973). Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Zweiter Teil. 1921–28. I. Kern (Ed.),. Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, E. (1977). Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie. K.  Schuhmann (Ed.),. Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, E. (1980). Phantasie, Bildbewusstsein, Erinnerung. Zur Phänomenologie der anschaulichen Vergegenwärtigungen. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1898–1925). E. Marbach (Ed.),. Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, E. (1994). Briefwechsel. K. Schuhmann & E. Schuhmann (Eds.),. Kluwer. Kern, I. (1964). Husserl und Kant. Eine Untersuchung über Husserl’s Verhältnis zu Kant und zum Neukantianismus. Nijhoff. Lasswitz, K. (1897). Auf zwei Planeten, vols. 1 and 2. Emil Felber. Majolino, C., & Djian, A. (2018). What ‘phenomenon’ for hermeneutics? Remarks on the hermeneutical vocation of phenomenology. In S. Geniusas & P. Fairfield (Eds.), Hermeneutics and phenomenology: Figures and themes (pp. 48–64). Bloomsbury. Majolino, C., & Djian, A. (2021). Phenomenon. In D. De Santis, B. Hopkins, & C. Majolino (Eds.), The routledge handbook of phenomenology and phenomenological philosophy (pp. 352–367). Routledge. Plato. (1941). The republic (F. M. Cornford. Trans.). Clarendon Press. Plato. (2008). Symposium (M. C. Howatson. Trans.). Cambridge University Press. Swift, J. (2005). In C.  Rawson & I.  Higgins (Eds.), Gulliver’s travels (1726). Oxford University Press. Zahavi, D., & Gallagher, S. (2008). The phenomenological mind. Routledge.

Chapter 2

Ghosts of Ourselves: Self-Responsibility in Georg Simmel’s The View of Life Nicolas de Warren

Ich bin. Aber ich habe mich nicht. Darum werden wir erst. – Ernst Bloch

We are but once. In this once upon a lifetime, we are many, as many as who we may have become, but also who we have not become; we are as many as there have been once upon a time, until that last breath of ours when we definitively pass into once upon a time. We are perpetually not yet, standing as much behind as before ourselves. And even as near our end of days, we sense that there somehow could and indeed should have been more to come, not only more life, but more to life. Are there not times when we feel our life to have been too late for itself? Are there not times when we feel our life to be too early for itself? For mostly, we seldom feel to be contemporaneous with ourselves and able to circumscribe the wholeness of our life within an encompassing embrace of who we are without residue, remorse, or regret for what could have been. Thus, we are pursued by ghostly apparitions of ourselves from the past, for these ghosts insist on still being heard, heedless of our welcome or disregard, and to which, despite ourselves, we are called to respond, if not atone. Alone with ourselves, we are at times least able to be at one with ourselves and reconciled with all that could have been. In such hours, we find ourselves wistfully adrift in the “could have been” of our lives, had it taken another course or followed upon different decisions. Wistfulness, however, is not synonymous with nostalgia. Whereas nostalgia tends towards a past to which one would want to return as it once was, wistfulness wanders within the spaces of what could have once become of us. In this mournful twilight, we recall ghosts of lives no longer ours and yet still somehow claiming to could have once been our own. That other life which I could have had strikes my present life as remote, and yet, uncannily, renders the life I do have all the stranger. From where does this incredulity stem that I am still the same person who back then did such and such a thing, but whom in retrospect I can no longer recognize as having in fact been me? How does this disbelief that I am N. de Warren (*) Penn State University, State College, PA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Geniusas (ed.), Varieties of Self-Awareness, Contributions to Phenomenology 121, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39175-0_2

27

28

N. de Warren

not the person I once could have been intrude upon the person I am? To what extent do I harbor within myself the graveyard of my impossible selves? The incredulity of having been born reverberates across the ages of our life, for much of who we are remains stillborn in the past within our lifetime. Living is not merely an affair of carrying forth or leaving behind who we have been. Living the unlived, the scars of who we have not become, of ghosts borne within us in the hollow spectacle of all those lives of ours not had, ever wanting, and still waiting for the impossible. Wistful reminiscing about people and places from our past attests to the unsettling awareness that we never truly leave ourselves behind, and more particularly that who we have not become somehow remains within the ambit of who we are, haunting us with paths not taken, or abandoned. Such imaginings of “what might have been” spin fairy tales of ourselves as retrospective projections of hope for an impossible past. We might seek to disencumber ourselves of this weight of possible lives permanently made, whether by ourselves or circumstance, impossible – laid to rest, and yet restless – in wanting to, proverbially-speaking, “go back in time” to make right what we had done wrong or with whom we had wronged: to say the right words, to act in ways that we were not able, back then, to judge correctly. Although we might wish to return to the past in order to change it and become other than who we presently are, wistfulness for who we might have been is not necessarily tethered to wanting to change the present. As explored in Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold, the principle, as it were, animating wistfulness can be seen with the novel’s time-traveling café rule that a person can go back to their past only on the condition that individuals (from the past) whom one wants to address have themselves visited this urban-legendary café and that there is nothing that one can do while in the past that will change the present. One must inevitably return from the past to same present, as measured in Kawaguchi’s storylines by the duration of a cup of coffee getting cold, and hence find the world exactly as one had left it, including oneself, even though returning to the past nonetheless allows one to return differently to the present. The past is what it is. And yet there nonetheless obtains an affective and imaginative leeway for self-variation in life’s remanence of what could have been. We should, moreover, not imagine the ghosts of ourselves as hidden objects, or “selves,” secreted away in dark closers or as a monkey on the shoulder, as it were, as an inert or petrified “self” at the margins of awareness. A fragmentary memory seizes upon our awareness, or the name of a long-forgotten lover flashes through the mind, or a surge of remorse and regret washes over us. Such involuntary reminiscences do not seem to have been catalyzed by anything in the perceptual present nor by an intentional act of recollection. We were not looking, and yet, the unfulfilled promise of what could have been catches us from behind. Stated in general terms, remembrance is a form of self-awareness whereby an experience from the past is reactivated – lived again as having once been – along with, following Husserl’s insight, a reactivation of the dormant ego, or self, from the past. I must remember myself as having been the one who originally experienced such and such in order for me to remember once having experienced it. I must remember myself in both senses as the one who remembers and the one who becomes remembered. Within the arc of remembrance, we reanimate a

2  Ghosts of Ourselves: Self-Responsibility in Georg Simmel’s The View of Life

29

sedimentation of our own time-consciousness and are thus able to revisit and re-­ inhabit not only what I had once experienced (having been to the theatre, etc.), but also who I once was. I can reassess what I was thinking back then, notice in hindsight a friend’s gesture and intonation, and reassess possibilities that were once on offer. Aspects of what I experienced back then can be seen more clearly, but likewise, aspects of my original experience can appear faded or, indeed, remain forgotten.1 In the case of wistfulness, it is less a question of the re-activation of what I once experienced than it is an imaginative inhabiting of who I have not become. Wistful remembrance reveals oneself to be in the plural, for every moment in life crystallizes around a decision that separates a time that could have been from a time that will be. With each decision in our lives, we feel as if life becomes split in two, between the life one does become and the life one does not become. We might regret this other life not had, and all those other un-had lives speak to us from afar, calling upon us to re-make a choice that can in fact never be undone. We are in this way burdened by the “kipple” of our own lives, cast away as ghosts of what might have been and who we might have become. We never lose anything about ourselves, and nothing is ever left behind, for we are condemned to carry ourselves entirely, possibilities as well as impossibilities, each singularly marked as our own. Wistful self-awareness exemplifies a fundamental feature of self-awareness, but not merely of how consciousness becomes aware of itself as consciousness, that is, as being conscious. As engrained within phenomenological accounts, what characterizes the “being” of consciousness – what it is “to be conscious” – is that “to be consciousness” just is to be consciousness of being-oneself-consciousness in a temporal manner through and through. Self-awareness is inseparable from temporal (self)-awareness. Consciousness of something, whether in perceptual experience, cognition, imagination, or dreaming, entails consciousness of oneself as “the one” who is conscious. Consciousness, in this regard, is always twofold without being doubled in vision. Wistfulness brings into view another feature of self-awareness, one exhibited in other varieties of self-awareness as well, and, indeed, arguably manifest in all forms of self-awareness. Wistfully reminiscing about who one could have been attests to the fact that self-awareness involves not merely being oneself conscious, but an awareness of having – and not just “being” – a life. In the awareness of being alive, there inhabits an awareness of possessing a life to be shaped, pursued, and accomplished. In wistfulness, this difference between “being alive” and “having a life” becomes acutely felt in the disjunction between having become who I am and not having become who I could have been. Self-awareness, in this manifestation, bespeaks an awareness of life’s sense of wholeness as a problem, namely, as a life that one cannot avoid having to live as mine, and and yet one that must be shaped, pursued, and accomplished in a way that leaves remainders and fragments, not only of my own possibilities, but just as much of my own impossibilities. Aware of ourselves as not just being alive but as having a life before us in a manner that calls upon us to decide how and who we are to be, self-awareness

 For Husserl’s conception of remembrance, see de Warren (2010).

1

30

N. de Warren

becomes inflected into an awareness “standing before oneself,” or, in other words, an awareness of self-responsibility for this once upon a time of having my life. The regret and remorse that underlines the poignancy of wistfulness attests to self-­ responsibility. As animators of wistfulness, regret and remorse highlight the disjunction between who I am and who I should, or ought, to be, of having one life to live, and caught, as it often is, between who I have become and who I have not become. As further explored in this essay, it this through this lens of consideration that the import of Simmel’s astute observation, as an entry point into his philosophy of life, can be understood: “Man’s possibilities are unlimited, but so too, in seeming contradiction, are his impossibilities. Between these two – the infinity of what he can do and the infinity of what he cannot do – lies his homeland” (2010, 165).

Achsendrehung des Lebens Having motivated these reflections on wistfulness as a variety of self-awareness in the mode of self-responsibility, let me launch into a discussion of Simmel’s philosophy of life in his – by his own acknowledgement – final philosophical testament, The View of Life (2010).2 In approaching this sagacious philosophical work, a precursor to mid-century and post-Second World War existential modes of thought, it does well to remind ourselves of the broader cultural diagnosis of modernity that Simmel pioneered in his avant-garde sociological writings. What defines modern life, for Simmel, is the absence of any credible “meta-narratives” or secure ontological foundation. In Lukács’ striking expression, modernity is afflicted by a condition of transcendental homelessness; one could likewise speak, as Max Weber does, of the “disenchantment” of the modern world. Although Simmel’s own analysis of modern culture differs in significant respects from these two contemporaries (Lukács had studied with Simmel in Berlin before migrating to Weber’s circle in Heidelberg), he broadly shares in their basic assessment of modernity as a world without gods, whether thought in terms of an Absolute, grounding ontological stability, or an over-arching teleological meaningfulness. Whereas, for example, the medieval world was anchored in an ontological distinction between created being and uncreated being (God), and the ancient world was embedded within a fundamental distinction between “being” and “becoming,” Simmel argues that, on the one hand, the transition to modernity during the nineteenth century displaced these historical fundamental ontologies with the metaphysical category of “life,” but that, on the other hand, life within the modern world becomes ensnared within an inevitable alienation from the self-generated forms of life’s own meanings (culture, broadly speaking). What defines the modern world is thorough-going relativism. Within a world marked by relativism in the absence of the gods, how can life attain fundamental meaningfulness and authentic existence? For Simmel, as he addresses in The

 For the historical context of the First World War for Simmel’s work, see de Warren (2023).

2

2  Ghosts of Ourselves: Self-Responsibility in Georg Simmel’s The View of Life

31

View of Life, meaningfulness for life cannot be discovered beyond life itself. As he writes: “the great problem of the modern spirit is to find a place for everything which transcends the givenness of vital phenomena within those phenomena themselves, instead of transposing it to a spatial beyond” (2010, 64). In a world without the sheltering sky of starry heavens above or the rational moral law within, it is within human existence that life must find its metaphysical purchase. As Simmel writes in an aphorism appended to The View of Life: “By my existence I am nothing more than an empty place, an outline, that is reserved within being in general. Given with it, though, is the duty to fill this empty place. That is my life” (170). Let us elaborate on the significance of this proposition, interlaced with our own terms and thinking. What it is to be alive is to have a life that must be claimed; hence the “duty” to make one’s existence meaningful. This claim upon life emerges from the empty placeholder of life itself, as if with birth life launched upon an adventure, the sense and significance of which could not prescribed or settled beforehand. Each of us stands as an “empty place” awaiting ourselves. This would be another way to express, in a more conventional metaphysical language, that life is a becoming. What it is “to be” is “to become,” as in Nietzsche’s memorable rendering of Pindar’s injunction γένοι’ οἷος ἐσσὶ μαθών: Werde, der du bist. We must become who we are. Although Simmel does not employ the terms “existence” or “facticity” in The View of Life, he addresses human life in terms of its “concrete being” or “concrete life” without any overlaid and obscuring conceptions of the human as rational animal, spiritual substance, psychological faculties, or indestructible soul. Moreover, although Simmel exhibited an interest in Social Darwinism and Herbert Spencer in his writings before the turn of the century, he emphatically dispenses with any talk of “human nature.” Throughout his writings, Simmel deliberately avoids speaking abstractly of “the subject” and “subjectivity,” but refers instead to “the individual,” “the concrete human,” and “the actuality of life.” In his essay “Freedom and the Individual,” Simmel argues that the nineteenth century witnessed a profound transformation in the conceptualization of human life (1971, 217–226). Traditional conceptions of the indestructible soul, a subject organized into faculties possessing universal cognitive capacities, or the noumenal self and the rational will, were displaced by a concept of life as developed by Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche (and in the early twentieth century by Henri Bergson). This metaphysical discovery of life represents the defining novelty of modern thought.3 In his pre-war writings, Simmel’s analysis of the problem of the individual (albeit without an emphasis on individual life) was shaped around the examination of a constitutive tension between social conditions and individual differentiation. As Simmel states, “the human being is never merely a collective entity, much as they are never merely an individual entity” (1989, 175). To be an individual is to be constituted dynamically through the intersection of the “external” (the social) and the “internal” (the psychological), where there is no firm separation of these two relational poles between which a field

 See Simmel (1922)‘s essay “Henri Bergson.”

3

32

N. de Warren

of tension becomes established and can be stabilized. Against the rational idealism of a universal subject and the Romanticism of interiority, an individual is per se neither “objective” nor “subjective,” since an individual is determined by a host of relational forces and social-cultural interactions. There is no absolute substantial self or irreducible core self, but only a process of individuating self-differentiations in reciprocal interaction with other self-differentiating individuals and social-cultural conditions (institutions, values, etc.). As Simmel writes: “Only the combination and fusion of several traits in one focal point forms a personality which then in its turn imparts to each individual trait a personal-subjective character. It is not that it is this or that trait that makes a unique personality of man, but that he is this and that trait” (2004, 296). More generally, every element (individuals, institutions, etc.) in a society is related to other elements through a variety of “reciprocal relational interactions” (Wechselwirkungen): conflict, domination, exchange, etc.4 These interactive forms of what Simmel terms “sociation” (Vergellschaftung) are ontologically primitive; social reality becomes realized, in situ and in re, through sociative forms of relational interaction. From these “delicate threads of the minimal relations between humans,” the fabric of society becomes woven, torn, and mended (2018, 20). An individual is situated in and must navigate a complexity of relational interactions and forms of differentiation. Fashion, for example, functions as a process of individual differentiation and social marking: it allows an individual to display their uniqueness while subjecting themselves to group conformity and belonging. By contrast, smug indifference, which Simmel detected to be a distinctly metropolitan phenomenon, expresses a defense against the hyper-stimulation, overcomplexity, and acceleration of modern life.5 What defines an individual is a coefficient of combinatorial belonging (or not belonging) to different social circles. An individual becomes more themselves the more they are inscribed within their social nexus, the more, in other words, reciprocal relational interaction occurs between themselves and others (1989, 244ff). A society is thus constituted from the totality of relational interactions among individuals, which, changing in configuration and forms, admits of no overall regulative principle other than the principle of Wechselwirkung itself.6 Within any social nexus, individual freedom involves degrees of available latitude and leeway for actions in negotiating conflicts among values and navigating relational interactions with others (Riedel, 2021, 48ff). In The View of Life, Simmel understands human life as necessarily standing within boundaries that provide place, orientation, and meaning in the world. We are bounded beings, existing within limits, structures, and forms in the incessant ebb and flow of their settlement, transgression, and transformation. Boundaries delimit a range between higher and lower, more or less – a space of variable meaning. To be so determined is to exist between two poles, pulled and pushed in conflicting

 For Simmel’s analysis of different forms of social interaction, see his Soziologie (Simmel, 1999).  See Simmel’s (1971) essays “Fashion” and “The Metropolis and Modern Life.” 6  As Simmel himself underlines, Wechselwirkung is the metaphysical principle of this thinking (1993 9). 4 5

2  Ghosts of Ourselves: Self-Responsibility in Georg Simmel’s The View of Life

33

directions at once. The finitude of human life is situated within a tensile field of conflictual meanings. Insofar as we are our boundaries, they cannot entirely define us, since in knowing ourselves to be the bounded beings that we are, we have already stepped beyond them. As Simmel writes: “We deny the boundary the moment we know its one-sidedness, without thereby ceasing to stand within it. This is the only thing that allows us to be released from our despair about it, about our finiteness and mortality: that we do not simply stand within these boundaries” (2010, 5). To exist is “to be” and “not to be” bound to the circumstances in which we find ourselves thrown. We are beholden to the world in determinate and contingent ways which are historical, cultural, social; but at the same time we project ourselves beyond our determinations. Life is animated by the polarity of becoming who we are and unbecoming who we have been; we exist between bounded immanence and unbounded transcendence.7 The import of this facticity is that the human is the limited being who possesses no limit: “we are bounded in every direction, and we are bounded by no direction” (2). Boundaries are indispensable for life since it as bounded beings that we have orientation and place in the world, and, moreover, that we are historical beings. And yet, we are bounded beings who have no intrinsic boundaries. Life, in other words, is a movement of transgression, for each step beyond a boundary creates a new boundary: in unbecoming who we have become, we become once more, time and again. The human condition of boundedness and unboundedness reflects the temporality of life itself. Largely taking his cue from Bergson, Simmel distinguishes between chronological time and lived duration, or durée. Although existing under chronological time, life transpires within its own intrinsic temporality in which past, present, and future are not external to each other. This lived temporality makes up what it is to have a life, for in having a life one’s own past becomes carried into the present in view of an open future into which one has already stepped. The pastness of one’s life is not a monolithic block, but rather composed of sedimented layers and “countless individual elements” that have not vanished in significance, but which protrude – i.e., “live for the day” (Hineinleben) – into the present. Many are the ways in which the past “lives into” the present: as remembrance, habit, etc. Every lived moment becomes transcended in a two-fold sense: through the protrusion of the past as well as the protrusion of the future. As Simmel writes: “We live perpetually in a border region that belongs as much to the past as to the future as to the present [and] insofar as life’s essence goes, transcendence is immanent to it (it is not something that might be added to its being, but instead is constitutive of its being)” (2010, 9). Significantly, Simmel proposes that the future is not properly understood when conceived merely in terms of anticipation or a directed projection. What it is to have future cannot be reduced to a conception of life as a “goal-setting being” whereby the future as such would be modeled on the projection of a telos at a fixed point ahead of us. Although Simmel does not discount the relationality of means  “Life is at once flux without pause and yet something enclosed in its bearers and contents, formed about individualized midpoints, and contrarily it is therefore always a bounded form that continually oversteps its bounds; that is, its essence” (Simmel, 2010, 9). 7

34

N. de Warren

and ends, and hence a correlative temporalization of life, a goal (the future as goal-­ directed) can only be projected based on an original protrusion (Hineinleben) of the future into the present. Life, in this sense, is always already ahead of itself. It is not the future as such that reaches from the present. The projection of a goal or possibility into the future presupposes an original openness of the future. The future, as an indeterminate openness, must already have arrived, as it were, in the present in order for the present to stand directed towards the future. The future of life is always a future of futures. The future of life is an open multiplicity of possible futures, and hence, in retrospect, the past resides within us as a multiplicity of possible ways in which life “could have been.” Given that the temporal openness of life to itself is not determined by a pre-given or prescribed telos, human existence, for Simmel, is without purpose in this temporal sense, without a defined end other than existing for the future as such. One has a life without already knowing what for. As Simmel writes: “We are not already there [da] at the instant of our birth; rather, something of us is born constantly” (1999, 299). What becomes born again in each instance of life is this singular having of life as the wanting of life in both senses of wanting to be and in want of being. In this temporal sense, the self-transcendence of life is immanent to life itself. As Simmel writes: “die Gegenwart des Lebens besteht darin, dass es die Gegenwart transzendiert” (220).8 From these reflections on temporality, Simmel arrives at the insight that life is animated by an intrinsic polarity between transience and transcendence, or between “more life” and “more than life.” Along the vector of “more life,” life is transient in traversing through itself in its becoming: each moment of my life is both more than the past of who I was, yet still am, and less than who I am yet to become, and still to be. Along the vector of “more than life,” life searches to transcend itself from within its own immanent transience. Cultural forms of meaning, relations of purposiveness, and other “spiritual forms” are expressions of life’s movement of “more than life,” without which life cannot meaningfully exist, that is, endure its own transience. Simmel in this respect speaks of the “turn towards Ideas,” as encompassing the whole of cultural forms, as offering a transcendent horizon of significance, by which he understands how life generates forms of meaning that endure beyond its finitude. These forms of meaning – culture, broadly construed – detach themselves however from life, attain their own independence (Eigenleben), and, in the process, subjugate, or “subjectify,” life itself: rather than these forms serving life, life becomes subservient to the forms of its own generation, and hence, degeneration. Evidencing the influence of Nietzsche’s thought, Simmel speaks of the Achsendrehung des Lebens – of the turning of life around its own axis against itself, but by the same token, turning back against itself through transvaluation of those forms of meaning to which it has become beholden, and hence, deadened.

 “The present of life consists in that life transcends the present.”

8

2  Ghosts of Ourselves: Self-Responsibility in Georg Simmel’s The View of Life

35

Todesverflochtenheit des Lebens The polarity between being bounded and becoming unbounded is further deepened in Simmel’s thinking through a reflection on the entanglement of life and death. As Simmel states: “in each and every moment of life we are of the kind that shall die.” Death’s significance centers on the constitutive tension between the transience of life – more life – and the transcendence of life – more than life. In contrast to commonplace assumptions that death is external to life, or merely an event that happens at some point in the future, it is “entirely certain,” Simmel contends, that death “inhabits [einwohnt] life from the outset” (1999, 122). Death, in other words, receives an ontological status for Simmel in the becoming of life. Mortality inhabits life, even though we are for the most part not at home, that is, at peace with the inevitability of our own demise. We live in death much as death lives in us, for death informs life from the beginning. Death is not reducible a discrete event or actuality, or dying, that interrupts life from the outside, as an alien intrusion, nor is death a possibility, one of many, on par with other possibilities of life awaiting felicitous circumstances for its actualization. This is not to deny that, from the standpoint of the living-present, we shall die at a discrete moment in the future. Simmel proposes, however, that the distinction between “actuality” and “possibility” comes short of grasping the sense in which life stands bound to death  – its own  – from within (1999, 124). Death is immanent to life, and it is in terms of this immanence of death to life that life in turn can transcend itself. Along comparable lines of thinking, death is not conceived by Simmel as an “end” or “goal” which, when attained, would complete life as whole. What it would mean, therefore, to have lived a wholesome life is not necessarily to have lived completely or died complete. Death is the sacramental seal of life’s character indelebilis. Simmel distinguishes between different forms of individuality: the individual as the particular of a universal (Einzelheit), the individual as unique in terms of their differentiation from other individuals (Einzigkeit), and the individual as their “ownmost” (Eigenheit). Each form of individuality, however, is death-bound, for what fundamentally defines the individual is their “once upon a time,” or, as Simmel expresses it: Nur-Einmal-Sein. As he writes in his study of Rembrandt: “the human individual, really grasped as pure individuality, is the unrepeatable form” (2005, 49). What Simmel calls “the secret of life” consists in the fact “that the whole of life is in each moment, and yet each moment is unmistakably different from any other” (12). This secret of life is the gift of death: “Thus, if one grasps death not as a violent creature waiting outside – as a fate coming upon us at a certain moment – if one moreover comprehends its insoluble, deep immanence in life itself, then the death secretly casting its shadow out of so many Rembrandt portraits is only a symptom of how unconditionally and precisely, in his art, the principle of life connects itself to that of individuality” (79). Death, as traced across the faces of Rembrandt’s portraits, is the “the always-­ effective actuality of every present” and “the formal moment of life that colours all its contents: the boundedness of the whole of life by death influences each of its contents and instants beforehand” (2010, 65). Rather than seeing death as what

36

N. de Warren

happens to life or raising the question as to why we are mortal beings, death is “the simple concrete being-so of our life, the fundamental how of a life as it passes through changing forms.” Death does not befall us (wir sind nicht ‘dem Tod verfallen’), for death traverses each breath we take in the transience of living. As Simmel writes, “our life becomes formed as that which we know it to be, when we grow old or wither away […] insofar as we can die. Life only becomes what it is, formed into itself, insofar as life shall die” (1999, 125). Death runs through life in imprinting its baptismal seal on the transience of every lived moment, but by the same token, death, as the form of life’s becoming, impels life to reach for more than life, and not just more life. Having a life plays itself out in the push and pull of transience and transcendence. Simmel speaks in this respect of the “mystery of the boundary,” revealed to be the mystery of death itself, that life cannot face death, bespoken in every breath we take, without elevating itself towards more than death. We are death-bound in life and yet unbounded from life in death. As Simmel formulates this thought in an aphorism: “I feel in myself a life that is impelled toward death – that in every instant and every content, it will die. And I feel another life that is not headed for death. I do not know which one carries its true properties, its process and its fate” (163). Simmel’s aphorism bespeaks how death, intrinsic to the form of life, carries a bivalent meaning. Life does not just reach beyond itself to leave something behind: life is already ahead of itself in projecting more than life, an “after-life,” before itself. The drive for more than life, the “life-pulse” traversing the incessant movement of “more life,” is distinct from a “feeling for eternity,” attesting to the unconditioned and “non-teleological” character of human striving for more than life. “No single content,” Simmel writes, “that has risen to the level of being formulated in consciousness absorbs the psychic process entirely in itself; each one leaves a residue of life behind it that knocks on the door it has shut, as it were. From this reaching out of the life process beyond each one of its identifiable contents, arises the general feeling of eternity of the soul” (1999, 76). In one sense, cultural forms are expressions of the drive for more than life; in another sense, there always remains an indivisible remainder of life  – more than life  – that can neither become fully alienated from nor fully encased in its own generated forms of meaning.

More Than Life In this manner, Simmel distinguishes between two senses of “more than life,” namely, the drive to create enduring forms of meaning – “culture,” broadly speaking  – and the drive for immortality (“feeling of eternity”). Throughout the transience of our lives, we possess a “feeling of eternity” in terms of a sense for our own existence as exceeding the manifold determinations of who we have been. According to Simmel, this self-transcendence of life finds symbolic expression in myths of the afterlife, the yearning for the eternal, and religious conceptions of immortality. But it also finds expression in the poignancy of regret for the numerous unfulfilled and

2  Ghosts of Ourselves: Self-Responsibility in Georg Simmel’s The View of Life

37

unclaimed possibilities that continue to haunt our lives, those residues of ourselves that litter our life as a whole. It is not merely that life exceeds itself in view of its possible futures. Life also exceeds itself with regard to its impossible pasts. Life stands open towards its own “nothingness,” or “non-being,” in the sense that it can be affected by its own unfulfilled possibilities as well as possibilities that never fell into the reachable orbit of actual life. Human finitude is therefore twofold: internally, vis-à-vis possibilities left unanswered, and externally, vis-à-vis possibilities beyond its horizon, namely, those that never entered into the realm of possibility and which, in this sense, remained for me impossible. As Simmel writes: “Man’s possibilities are unlimited, but so too, in seeming contradiction, are his impossibilities. Between these two – the infinity of what he can do and the infinity of what he cannot do – lies his homeland” (2010, 165). From this insight, Simmel proposes that the responsibility we nonetheless feel for those residual and unclaimed possibilities in our lives, as well as for those impossibilities that remain within us, carried along in the wake of regret, resonates in an existential sense of responsibility for our lives as a whole (unbounded by the actuality of life), and hence, the possibilities life has claimed for itself. This meta-­ ethical significance of responsibility exceeds and envelops the identity of the self (Coyne, 2018, 71). What defines our “ownmost” is this unbounded yet not unmoored responsibility for ourselves, extending beyond the possible and actual, to embrace what could never have been for us, namely, those impossibilities that haunt us. We are shadowed, and hence shaped, by death – our own – not only as the “always-­ reality of every present” but equally by the “never possibility” of every present. This sense of “the impossible,” for which we stand responsible before ourselves, impels the envisioning of immortality imaginatively and symbolically (as distinct from the envisioning of the generational after-life as culture). As Simmel writes: “Our narrow reality is perhaps shot through with the feeling of these unbounded tensions and potential directions and equipped with the intimation of an intensive endlessness that is projected in the time-dimension as immortality” (2010, 92).9 When demythologized and read back from its existential ground in the gift of death – death as the drive for more life and more than life – Simmel considers that the desire for immortality, understood as the desire for the endurance of life beyond substantial existence, or an existence unmoored from actuality and possibility, expresses an existential desire for the impossible – to live beyond death – as if life sought to reclaim what proved impossible in life with the impossibility of life outside or beyond life. As Simmel remarks: “Perhaps, the whole idea of the immortality of man simply signifies the accumulated feeling, heightened into a uniquely immense symbol, for the transcendence of life beyond itself” (2010, 14). In developing this thought, Simmel argues that “the metaethical core of Christianity” consists in a conception of individual human existence as standing in a relation of  As Coyne insightfully states: “the ego is haunted by the residues of life, suggesting that its sense of responsibility is not at all congruent with its sense as a self-identical entity” (2018, 70). For Coyne, “the uniqueness of existential contingency is the real breakthrough achieved in ‘Death and Immortality’” 9

38

N. de Warren

absolute self-responsibility before God. This responsibility for the singularity of one’s own contingency proves, however, to be unbearable. As Simmel writes: “This utterly undiluted self-responsibility achieved nowhere else in such intensity and coincident personality, is nonetheless not bearable for the majority of souls” (87). And yet, in shouldering an absolute responsibility for ourselves – the singular burden that defines what is authentically mine – “death is overcome.” It is not that death becomes effaced or vanquished, thus leading to substantial immortal existence. Rather, “the individual entirely on his own balances [himself] as though on a needlepoint; in the deep sense of threat that is conjoined with his life situation, he cannot do without his grip on the thought that ultimately death can have no hold on him.” The contingency of human existence, underlined by the transience of experience, is inseparable from an impulse for transcendence. In the passage from more life to more than life, there is an exceedance of life all the while bearing the seal of death’s benediction. An individual life feels viscerally that one is continuously becoming different, not just in terms of aging, but more substantially in terms of choices made and unmade, of who one has been or could have been, or failed to be. And yet, throughout the unfolding of possibilities claimed and unclaimed, one somehow feels oneself to be the same, even, paradoxically, the oneself that was not to be or could never have been. There is an inconstruable sense of being oneself that “runs through all this [the reality of life] without being at all influenced by anything in particular coming from its nature as a soul” (2010, 94). An individual life feels itself to be more than what one is, as determined by one’s history, social environment, and cultural milieu. In thus drawing an implicit distinction between who one is and what I am, Simmel does not have in mind a definition of “the who I am” as a substantial soul or transcendent ego that would persists across, or above, the temporal unfolding of life’s becoming. Although Simmel grants that speaking of the “constancy of presence” and “an enduring self” is fraught with possible misunderstanding, incontrovertible is the meaningful claim that something (or “some-who,” as it were) persists (or better, insists) in us, namely, oneself, “while we are wise men and then fools, beasts and then saints, happy and then despairing” (96). What defines this “something” and “somehow” – the who that becomes me – cannot admittedly be spelled out directly or articulated conceptually, and yet it can still be characterized. Rather than an ontological determination of the constancy of being an individual, Simmel proposes an ethical-existential characterization of oneself as an abiding and absolute, i.e., uniquely one’s own, responsibility for oneself. An individual life, as an unfolding whole, is not only constituted as an aggregate or synthesis of discrete experiences and social determinations. Who one is is always “more” than what one has been, and not just in the sense of “more life” but, and in the same breath, as “more than life.” This individual self-transcendence within one’s own transience gravitates around the axis of life’s death-bound responsibility for oneself.10 The twofold transcendence of life – more life and more than life – makes it that “concrete life” is strung and stretched between two mutually interacting and

10

 See Pyyhtinen (2012).

2  Ghosts of Ourselves: Self-Responsibility in Georg Simmel’s The View of Life

39

yet mutually irreducible poles: “on the one hand, we are thrown into and adapted to cosmic movement, yet on the other hand we feel and conduct our individual existence from our own centre, as self-responsible and, as it were, in self-enclosed form” (1999, 319). Importantly, Simmel does not consider this interactive polarity (and hence tension) in terms of a difference between “actuality” and “possibility” or, indeed, between “being” and “becoming.” As gleaned from his reflections on death, the irrecusable responsibility for oneself exceeds responsibility for our actual selves since it embraces those possibilities that were not claimed, or could not be claimed, or which failed to be successfully actualized. An individual life stands before itself as more than its own actuality and possibility, and this “more than life,” the impossibilities of life that are nonetheless one’s own, is not beyond oneself, but, on the contrary, defines the oneself that stands beyond myself to which I remain intimately bound, as with those manifold regrets and guilts, for example, that haunt who I am with shadows of who I could have been, yet can no longer become. These shadows of who I could have been as well as who I could not have been gather, as it were, around a profound sense not only of who I could have been, but of who I should have been. What proves crucial for understanding the existential difference between “actuality” and “the ought” is that “actuality” is always determined by contingent and changing – i.e., culturally and historically – forms. “Actuality” itself is a form of experience, in fact, one among many forms, in terms of which we shape and apprehend experience and thus it “has no more intimate or privileged relation to that content than do the categories of science, art, wish, and value” (Simmel, 2010, 99). As with any form of experience, “actuality” stands in interactive relations with other forms, yet nonetheless enjoys a “monopoly” among forms, given that all objects of experience are determined by actuality, namely, as “something existing or something that is.” This monopoly of actuality (or stated more exactly, “actuality-­ possibility”) does not fully extend, however, across an individual’s life, since Simmel identifies “the ought” as a “second category according to which we continually experience our life, one which is somewhat parallel to actuality, but in no way reducible to it” (100). As existential determinations of life, “actuality” and “the ought” are in a productive tension with each other. Life cannot exclusively and exhaustively be determined ontologically in terms of actuality, for in striving for “more than life,” an individual confronts their life in light who one ought to be. An individual life stands before oneself as incessantly “challenged to better oneself,” and this demand does not issue from a moral law or authority exterior to life (God, for example), but from life itself. The “ought” can thus be said to be something like an “Individual Law that prescribes an existential mode of living one’s whole life.” However, as Simmel cautions, one can “never extract, from the fact of the Ought, what we ought, content-wise, to do,” since the content of this existential Ought is “utterly variegated, accidental, determined in each case historically and psychologically, and in no way form[s] a systematic order” (102).

40

N. de Warren

Absolute Self-Responsibility This discovery of an existential Ought, or the Law of the Individual, is motivated by the reformulation of an ambiguity that repeatedly confronted Simmel’s thinking: how to reconcile the relativity of the world with the possibility of individual authenticity?11 How can an individual be singularly – that is, absolutely – responsible for oneself in a world of changing values and interminable conflicts? Where is absolute meaningfulness to be found for a death-bound life? Where can one find the absolute in a world without gods? As Simmel observes, “we are determined by a thousand influences that affect others similarly, we are graded by social institutions and stratifications, and colored by general historical conditions; precisely as empirical beings we are governed by natural law with its deindividualizing general validity, just as we also submit, as empirical beings, to the universal laws of justice” (2010, 112). Bound to and defined by the world, the struggle of becoming oneself involves, as Simmel discusses in his pre-war writings, navigating a constitutive tension between external determinations and internal dispositions; these continually pass into each other in the process of shaping one’s life as whole from a multitude of fragments, influences, and conditions. If the world and history can no longer provide an over-arching meaningfulness to it all, can life find a wholeness of meaningfulness for its own individual existence? Rather than a restatement of the problem of the one and the many (projected onto the question of what it is to have life) in the vernacular of “being” and “becoming,” “substance” and “attribute,” “transcendental” and “empirical,” Simmel recasts the question of life in the mold of his existential distinction between “actuality” and “ought.” It is important to stress that Simmel does not understand this reformulation as the problem of freedom in terms of determinism and indeterminism. In the same vein, Simmel’s question of concrete life stands removed from the ontological primacy of an ontological difference between “being” and “becoming” (or beings), on the basis of Simmel’s claim that the “ought” must be recognized in its facticity, that is, as “an absolutely primary category” (151). By the same token, the Kantian difference between “actuality” (empirical determinations and the empirical self) and “ought” (noumenal freedom and the noumenal self) becomes supplanted with an existential difference, inscribed within life itself, between “actuality” and “Ought.” As Simmel writes: “Only when we understand the Ought, beyond all of its particular contents, as a primary mode in which the individual consciousness experiences a whole life does it become understandable why one can never extract, from the fact of the Ought, what we ought, content-wise, to do” (152).  As Köhnke (1996) argues, the “law of individual” emerged in Simmel’s writings as early as 1900 to form the “normative center” of Simmel’s thinking. For Hasn-Peter Müller (2021), Simmel’s law of the individual represents a Nietzschean “aristocratic individualism.” As he argues: “Thanks to spiritual education and aesthetic experience, aristocratic individualism is able to shape its own path in life and create its own distinctive personal lifestyle. This aristocratic individuality, Simmel has no illusions about that, is reserved only for a minority and probably only for a small elite” (284). For Simmel’s Nietzscheanism and its influence, see Leck (2020). 11

2  Ghosts of Ourselves: Self-Responsibility in Georg Simmel’s The View of Life

41

Embedded in every choice of action and conduct, whether implicitly or explicitly, is a self-embracing decision to become the person one “ought” to be. Bound to oneself, this decision does not occur in the noumenal realm of freedom, and hence, outside or before time, nor does it emerge as the consequence or aggregate of an individual’s particular choices. In every act, the entirety of one’s life is at stake. Yet, the Law of the Individual does not prescribe a content of action, nor can the Law of (each) Individual become universalized since it bears on me specifically and absolutely. Indeed, one cannot, strictly speaking, speak of a “choice” in terms of a decision among different possibilities, since the individual life that one bears, or has, is not one possibility among many, much as (my) death is not one among many possibilities of life. As with the singularity of death to which one is bound, inhabiting the form of life, the Law of the Individual inhabits one’s way of life. The choice to prescribe for oneself what one ought to do, and act upon this self-prescription, implies a prescription regarding who one ought to be, such that, on this account, decisions for a particular action and conduct in the world tacitly imply and invoke an existential decision regarding oneself. Beneath every choice to act in a determinate manner there is an existential decision concerning oneself; each action becomes effectuated on the ground of this self-choosing from which it arises, but likewise, the resoluteness to be oneself rebounds back upon itself from the choices one makes to act. As Simmel writes: “Thus the whole of life is responsible for every act, and every act for the whole of life” (2010, 153). This back and forth, or polarity, between “actuality” and “ought,” between what I choose to do (under given contingent circumstances) and who I ought to be, paves the grounded path for an individual life from within the groundlessness of life itself. Stated in these terms, Simmel proposes that “the ultimate metaphysical problematic of life” consists in the interactive polarity between “actuality” and “the ought.” An individual life is animated by an internal tension between “consciousness of life as it actually is” and “consciousness of life as it ought to be.” “The ought” is “precisely a mode by which life becomes aware of itself,” and although “we thereby appear to lead two lives,” namely, between actuality and the ought, “what we sense as the unity of life is in no way destroyed” (101). We are both near and far from ourselves; far from who we ought to be as measured by the nearness of who we have actually become, but also as measured by the remoteness from what we have not become. In developing this account of an “existential Ought,” Simmel draws significantly, albeit silently, on Goethe in speaking of the Ought as “a categorical Ur-phenomenon.” As a “primary phenomenon,” the impulsion to become who one ought to be, as prescribed to oneself in situ through the actuality of decisions and actions taken or not, an individual life becomes set upon the adventure of its own self-discovery and self-determination without following or adhering to an over-arching purpose beyond the death-bound project of living itself. Life is a purposiveness without a purpose, animated by its own creative play at forming itself. As with death that binds life to itself in absolute self-responsibility, the Ought is “purposeless” – there is no prescribed telos or goal to life other than life’s own becoming more than life. As Simmel writes: “We are obliged, not from such a purpose, but from ourselves; the Ought as such is no teleological process. This naturally does not apply to the content

42

N. de Warren

of the Ought, which in fact continually presents itself under the category of purpose […]. But that we should do this, that it claims us under the category of duty – this again is not itself dependent on the purpose we serve with the actuality [Tatsächlichkeit] of such action” (2010, 141). Historically, the ethical demand upon the self was defined either as “a decision based on personal conscience, or it comes from the objective, from a superindividual precept drawing its validity from its material-conceptual consequences.” Simmel proposes a third way: “the objective Ought of this very individual, the demand imposed from his life onto his life and in principle independent of whether he really recognizes it or not” (142). As a function of the whole life, the Law of the Individual bespeaks a secret destiny into the heart of life, only to be known and discovered, or missed and forgotten, by individual life itself. There is therefore a “double incompatibility” of life with itself. The Ought is as unprovable to others as it is incontrovertible for oneself; it can neither be imparted to others nor substituted for another’s. In facing oneself as a yet unknown adventure, an individual lives within an intimate dimension of solitude which is not to be confused with loneliness or alienation. Whether achieved or failed, an individual stands before itself in absolute responsibility for a life that calls to be achieved and accomplished, come what may. The “purposiveness without purpose” of becoming who we ought to be circumscribes an open horizon, or unbounded finitude, within which determined purposes can be claimed for oneself but equally discarded and transformed. Much as death animates life with the impulsion of more life (transience) as well as more than life (transcendence), where the latter stands under the lodestar of an “ought” only discoverable only to me. The Ought, when conceived as the Law of the Individual, is not a prescriptive command per se, but a compelling manner of becoming aware of oneself in terms of the demand and hence pursuit for authenticity, to become, and hence to decide to become, who one should be within given contingent circumstances. Awareness of one’s life under the call of this demand “to become who one ought to be” entails a striving to become “other” than who one has been in the pursuit of more than life rather than merely more life. Straddling who one is and who one ought to be, an individual leads their life simultaneously on two non-­synchronous planes: the life one has been (actually) living and could continue to lead, and the life one ought to pursue. In this existential-ethical sense, an individual life is both “subject” and “object,” both “I and Thou” for oneself, as, for example, when one addresses oneself with the question: who shall I be? The tension between “actuality” and “ought” within oneself suggests, for Simmel, that an individual cannot merely posit or affirm themselves, and hence, constitute themselves absolutely, for what is demanded of a life is to negotiate the interplay, on the one hand, within themselves (between actuality and ought) and, on the other hand, with their world. This interplay between “self-positing” and “alien-positing” (Fremdsetzung) reflects the condition that one’s “ownmost,” namely, their Law of the Individual, confronts them in their actual existence as alien, or other, namely, as the demand to become other than who one has been in order to accomplish who one should be. The impulsion to become who one ought to be thus involves becoming other than oneself in order to be oneself. This otherness of oneself is experienced in the obscurity of the

2  Ghosts of Ourselves: Self-Responsibility in Georg Simmel’s The View of Life

43

Ought itself, which, speaking from the depth of a life, calls upon life to not just more life, but to more than life. As Simmel writes: This vitalizing and individualizing of ethicality is so foreign to all egoism and subjectivism […] many of our acts, pardonable sins examined in isolation, only attain their full weight when we make clear to ourselves that our entire existence has pushed toward them, and that they will define our existence perhaps for the entire future – a criterion, however, that can only be valid for this individual life, and would be utterly senseless if generalized to any others who are not absolutely identical to me. (2010, 150).

Simmel’s existential thinking ascribes to an ethical life an infinitely more difficult responsibility. It is not only that an individual is responsible for choosing their particular actions and conduct in relation to the moral Law. An individual must choose themselves – to be the kind of person who would at all decide to be moral – and thus for establishing the conditions within their own existence for the traction and uptake of duties and norms. In this sense, there is a “creative aspect of the ethical realm, with its dangers and responsibilities” (2010, 152) that, for Simmel, Kant’s categorical imperative obscures as well as alleviates since its spares us from being self-­ creating (as opposed to autonomy as the source of action) and thus realizing the authentic autonomy of life itself in its death-bound singularity. In his 1915 lecture on death and art, Simmel concludes his reflections with a reference to Rilke’s insight from das Stunden-Buch that “jeder seinen eigenen Tod stirbt” (everyone dies their own death) (1999, 131). As Simmel comments: “Whoever is unique, whose form disappears with him, he alone dies so to speak definitively: in the depths of individuality as such is the fate of death anchored […] the individual being dies am gründlichsten (most fundamentally), because he lived am gründlichsten (most fundamentally)” (130). As Simmel reflects on his view of life: “Instead of the truly bleak Nietzschean thought – ‘Can you desire that this action of yours recur infinitely often?’ – I propose: ‘Can you desire that this action of yours should define your entire life?’” (2010, 151).12 To live am  gründlichsten would therefore seemingly demand to live without ghosts of ourselves, or, alternatively, that we somehow find peace with the graveyard of impossible selves within us, once and for all, for once in a lifetime.

References Coyne, R. (2018). Bearers of transcendence: Simmel and Heidegger on death and immortality. Human Studies, 41(1), 59–78. de Warren, N. (2010). Husserl and the promise of time. Cambridge University Press. de Warren, N. (2023). German philosophy and the First World War. Cambridge University Press. Köhnke, K.  C. (1996). Der junge Simmel in Theoriebeziehungen und sozialen Bewegungen. Suhrkamp.  Sections of this chapter have been drawn from Chap. 3 of de Warren (2023). I thank Cambridge University Press for permission to adapt sections of this paper from chapter 4 in German Philosophy and the First World War (2023).  12

44

N. de Warren

Leck, R. M. (2020). Georg Simmel and avant-garde sociology: The birth of modernity, 1880–1920. Humanity Books. Müller, H.-P. (2021). Krise und Kritik. Klassiker der soziologischen Zeitdiagnose. Suhrkamp. Pyyhtinen, O. (2012). Life, death and individuation: Simmel on the problem of life itself. Theory, Culture & Society, 29(7–8), 78–100. Riedel, M. (2021). Metaphysik des Irgendwie. Karl Alber Verlag. Simmel, G. (1922). Henri Bergson (1914). In Zur Philosophie der Kunst. Gustav Kiepenheuer. Simmel, G. (1971). In D.  Levine (Ed.), On individuality and social forms. University of Chicago Press. Simmel, G. (1989). Gesamtausgabe in 24 Bänden. Band 2: Aufsätze 1887 bis 1890. Über sociale Differenzierung (1890). Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie (1892). Suhrkamp. Simmel, G. (1993). Buch des Dankes. Duncker & Humblot. Simmel, G. (1999). Gesamtausgabe in 24 Bänden. Band 16: Der Krieg und die geistigen Entscheidungen. Grundfragen der Soziologie. Vom Wesen des historischen Verstehens. Der Konflikt der modernen Kultur. Lebensanschauung. Suhrkamp. Simmel, G. (2004). In D. Frisby (Ed.), The philosophy of money (3rd ed.). Routledge. Simmel, G. (2005). Rembrandt: An essay in the philosophy of art. Routledge. Simmel, G. (2010). The view of life (J. Andrews & D. Levine Trans.). University of Chicago Press.

Chapter 3

Daydreaming and Self-Awareness Saulius Geniusas

Sometimes described as “mental travel” (Caughey, 1984), and other times as “inward emigration” (Goffman, 1967), daydreaming (hereafter: DD) appears to be an insignificant mode of experience, and it is seldom addressed either in phenomenology1 or in philosophy.2 Psychological analyses dominate this field of research, and they are primarily concerned with questions regarding why and about what people daydream. In sociology and cultural anthropology, investigations of DD are primarily focused on the sociocultural frameworks that shape the content of DD and on the institutionalized ways of “doing nothing” (Ehn & Löfgren, 2010).  In classical phenomenological literature, DD is addressed as a marginal theme, either as an illustration or as a “transitional” phenomenon that enables us to understand other and presumably more important themes. Besides such scattered reflections on DD that we come across in the works of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre, more comprehensive studies of DD have been undertaken by Theodor Conrad (1968), Gaston Bachelard (1969), and more recently by James Morley (1998), Evan Thompson (2015), and Dieter Lohmar (2018). 2  In general, as far as Western reflections on DD are concerned, Thomas Branch appears to be the first thinker to have written a treatise on DD with his Thoughts on Daydreaming published in 1738. DD was addressed by a number of British empiricists (especially by Hobbes, Locke, and Hume) who did not distinguish between DD and MW (Sutton, 2010). Following their lead, William James (1983) further addresses both phenomena, without distinguishing between them, in his magnum opus, The Principles of Psychology. Yet only relatively recently have philosophers started to address DD and MW as themes that by themselves merit philosophical attention; see especially Metzinger (2013, 2018), Dorsch (2015), Irving (2016, 2021), Irving and Thompson (2018). In this context, the recently published anthology, The Oxford Handbook of Spontaneous Thought: Mind-­ Wandering, Creativity and Dreaming (Fox & Christoff, 2018) calls for a special emphasis. It includes 41 contributions by cognitive scientists, psychologists, and philosophers. 1

S. Geniusas (*) Department of Philosophy, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territorties, Hong Kong e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Geniusas (ed.), Varieties of Self-Awareness, Contributions to Phenomenology 121, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39175-0_3

45

46

S. Geniusas

Neuroscientific investigations aim to identify those neurological mechanisms that make DD possible. What can phenomenology contribute to the cross-disciplinary science of DD, which in recent years has experienced an efflorescence under the heading of “spontaneous thought” (Fox & Christoff, 2018)? The central questions that guide phenomenological investigations of DD can be formulated as follows: What must consciousness be if it is to be capable of DD? How does DD relate to other modes of experience, especially mind-wandering (hereafter: MW), lucid and non-lucid dreaming, and phantasizing? What are the constitutive functions and eidetic features of DD in the overall life of consciousness? These questions are fundamental to research on DD, yet answers are nowhere to be found. We can take this to mean that phenomenology, being first and foremost concerned with the eidetic structures of experience and their genesis, can make an important contribution to this burgeoning field of research. Moreover, insofar as phenomenology is a methodologically oriented and cross-disciplinary science of consciousness, it cannot afford to ignore DD. Our understanding of the life of consciousness will be severely limited for as long as we ignore the phenomenon. My goal here is to show why a phenomenological analysis of DD can significantly enrich our understanding of conscious life. Let me begin by singling out six important reasons to study DD in phenomenology.

Why Should Daydreams Be Interesting for Phenomenologists? 1. A careful study of DD can help us avoid pigeonholing psychic life, as if it were divided into unrelated experiential fields: on the one hand, wakeful intuitive experiences (perception, memory, anticipation, phantasy); and on the other hand, modes of sleep (lucid dreaming, non-lucid dreaming, dreamless sleep). DD, mind-wandering, and lucid nightdreaming (hereafter: ND) are the three intermediary phenomena that break such a rigid dichotomy asunder.3 A phenomenology of such phenomena as DD can bring to light the fact that the relation between different modes of experience is much more intricate than it is generally acknowledged. They share various features with each other, while at the same time having their own specific characteristics. 2. There are different and complementary ways to typologize psychic life. We are familiar with the classical phenomenological distinction between original and reproductive experiences, i.e., between “presentations” (Gegenwärtigungen) and “presentifications” (Vergegenwärtigungen), or between perception on the one hand, understood as original intuitive experience, and memory, anticipation, phantasy, understood as reproductive modes of intuitive experience on the other. Let us not overlook that in classical phenomenological accounts, presentations  I have addressed these phenomena related to DD in some of my recent publications. For a phenomenological study of MW, see Geniusas (2022a). For a phenomenological study of ND, see Geniusas (2021a, 2022b). 3

3  Daydreaming and Self-Awareness

47

and presentifications are addressed from the same egoic standpoint, viz., from the here and now. In order to understand psychic life, besides distinguishing between original and reproductive modes of experience along these lines, one must also distinguish them in terms of what Theodor Conrad (1968) has identified as different egoic standpoints (Ich-Situationen). Not all experiences are lived through from the here and now. There is a whole group of experiences – along with Conrad, we can call them absorbed, or displaced, experiences (Versetztseinserlebnisse) – that are lived through from the dislocated standpoint: the there and then. Moreover, there are also mixed experiences, that is, experiences that are more or less displaced, more or less absorbed (Geniusas, 2021b). As we will see, DD belongs to this last group of mixed experiences. For as long as we do not take the distinction between displaced and non-displaced experiences into account, and for as long as we do not realize that displacement admits of degrees, our understanding of the life of consciousness will remain severely limited. 3. DD belongs to those experiences that in contemporary discussions in psychology and cognitive sciences are grouped under the heading of spontaneous thoughts (Fox & Christoff, 2018). Although there has been an explosion of interest in this group of thoughts in recent decades, to this day a clear taxonomy of spontaneous thoughts remains missing. In this regard, phenomenology could make a highly important contribution to this field of research.4 According to popular estimates among psychologists, spontaneous thoughts make up between one-third and onehalf of all our wakeful thoughts (Klinger & Cox, 1987; Klinger, 1999, 2009). This means that our understanding of consciousness will be severely constrained for as long as we ignore this tremendously large group of experiences, as is usually done in philosophy. This is a limitation that phenomenology cannot afford. At least in one of its classical formulations, phenomenology’s ultimate ambition is to be a philosophy of consciousness, or even a science (Wissenschaft) of consciousness. A science of consciousness cannot be comprehensive for as long as it does not include a chapter on the phenomenology of DD. 4. Another reason concerns self-awareness. Although phenomenologists tend to oppose formalism in philosophy, on occasion they speak of self-awareness as a general feature of conscious life.5 Such formal, generalizing approaches run the  As I have argued elsewhere, we can distinguish between the following modes of spontaneous thoughts: intellectual absorption, rumination, MW, DD, and the strange mode of thought that William James named using a German term, Zerstreutheit. We can further single out two pathological modes of spontaneous thoughts: uncontrollable thoughts in obsessive-compulsive disorder and the lifelike re-experiencing of post-traumatic stress disorder. It is not possible to address all these modes of spontaneous thought in detail in the present context. For further details, see Geniusas (2022a). 5  Like all other modes of experience, DD is also characterized by what phenomenologists call “pre-­ reflective self-awareness,” viz., the non-objectifying, implicit, and non-thematic awareness that consciousness has of itself. As it intends x, or y, or z, consciousness is at the same time pre-­ reflectively self-aware as intending x, or y, or z. Without such a minimal sense of pre-reflective self-awareness, no constitution of sense would be possible. All consciousness is characterized by a 4

48

S. Geniusas

risk of downplaying the phenomenological differences between different modes of experience that make up the life of consciousness.6 Arguably, these different modes of experience are characterized by different modes of self-awareness. This makes one wonder: is there anything specific about the self-awareness that accompanies DD? 5. DD is a mode of the cogito. As some phenomenologists have argued (Lohmar, 2018), it is a basic mode of thinking – more precisely, a phantasmatic mode of thinking – which human beings share with non-human animals. This means that in order to understand what thinking is – and also to understand the human relation to non-human conscious life – we cannot ignore DD. 6. DD is a transitional phenomenon which lies at the limit of wakefulness. It is still accessible to a phenomenological description, although only in part. Its deeper understanding can enable us to understand other, more intuitively remote phenomena, such as lucid and non-lucid dreaming, or even dreamless sleep, with which DD shares some common features. At this point we can clearly see why a study of DD is much needed in such fields as phenomenology. In what follows, I wish to offer a phenomenological account of DD. I will be primarily concerned with concept clarification: what is DD? I will address this question while relying on those resources that we come across in phenomenology, both classical and contemporary. The analysis of this question will necessitate that we inquire into the relation between DD and self-awareness.

What Is Daydreaming? Imagine that you are riding in a car on a long road trip and that you start DD. This doesn’t force you to cause an accident: you can still slow down and speed up, pass other cars or let them pass you, change the radio station, take the exit when you need to. While DD, the imaginary course of events absorbs your attention, yet you remain conscious of your surroundings. DD is not a matter of abandoning reality, but of keeping it at a distance. “The world remains – in the divergence” (Merleau-Ponty, 2010, 149).

tacit, immediate, pre-reflective, and non-objectifying self-awareness, and this concerns DD as well. Yet how are we to understand the self-awareness that characterizes DD? The working hypothesis that underlies this investigation is that the self-awareness that accompanies DD is of a unique kind and that, therefore, our understanding of DD to a large degree depends on our understanding of this unique mode of self-awareness. 6  In Colombetti (2011), we come across an important exception. Here Colombetti offers a phenomenological description of different modes of embodied self-awareness. In some of my own recent papers I have also tried to address these differences while focusing on different modes of intuitive consciousness (Geniusas, 2022b). Various other contributions included in this volume on self-­ awareness also provide further support for the view that pre-reflective self-awareness can be spoken of in many ways.

3  Daydreaming and Self-Awareness

49

As suggested by the English term, “DD” (or by the German term, “Tagtraum”), we face here a paradoxical phenomenon: DD is simultaneously a mode of wakefulness and a mode of sleep; it belongs both to the light of day and to the world of dreams. What is wakefulness? We can understand it as a state of comprehensive world-openness: to be awake is to be open to the world. This is an openness to life and experience, as well as to events and actions. Being a mode of wakefulness, DD takes place in the presence of the world. This is what DD shares with other wakeful experiences, and this is also what distinguishes DD from non-lucid ND. Yet this presence also entails a curious absence. DD lies between wakefulness and sleep. It has one foot in the actual world and another foot in the dream world. In contrast to non-lucid ND, DD takes place in the presence of the actual world: it is not completely taken hold of, it “does not fully abandon itself to the abundance of the imaginary” (Merleau-Ponty, 2010, 144).7 Yet there are important features that both ND and DD share. First, both constitute their own worlds within which all the dreamed scenes are played out.8 Second, both rely on a narrative structure. While DD or ND, we spin a tale in which we ourselves are involved, sometimes as observers, other times as protagonists. Third, for the most part, we don’t spin this tale in words, but in images. While DD or ND, the scenes for the most part unfold as chains of visualizing thoughts. As Julien Varendonck insightfully remarks in his trailblazing study, Psychology of Day-Dreams: “We are able to think in words; but lower in the animal scale, where speech is absent, what else but images can exist as elements of thought?” (1921, 77). The conceptual distinction between DD and MW has never been fixed and many authors use these terms interchangeably.9 We can distinguish between them along  In this regard, it would be highly promising to address DD in the framework of phenomenological discussions of “atmosphere” (see especially Schmitz, 2009). Our lives unfold in different atmospheres, some of which are better suited for DD than others. More precisely, different atmospheres are better suited for different kinds of DD. Dusk and dawn have their own atmospheres, just as different private and public spaces. In this regard, Gaston Bachelard’s reflections on DD in different spaces in one’s own home are especially telling. It is also noteworthy that this atmospheric DD potential is well-recognized by various industries, such as the hotel industry. In a study of hotel design, the Swedish writer Maria Strannegård (2009) explores how the industry thinks about staging everything from the lobby to the bathrooms. The question here is how to create appropriate spaces for DD. Various tricks are used, including the choice of music in the elevator, the special lighting in the lobby, the atmosphere in the bar, and various other design details. See also Ehn and Löfgren (2010). 8  Here I depart from the view defended by such thinkers as Bachelard and Jose Luis Borges, who, following Carl Jung, maintain that DD, much like ND, provides consciousness with access to the elemental. I do not endorse this view in the present context because, Bachelard’s and Borges’ arguments to the contrary notwithstanding, I do not think we have enough phenomenological reasons to endorse it. The phenomenological evidence suggests that DD-images are products of the spontaneity of consciousness. Yet I should also stress that the two views I am here considering are not incompatible with each other. If one subscribes to the view that daydreams are spontaneous creations of consciousness, one can further maintain that spontaneous creativity links us to the elemental. While leaving such a possibility open, in the present context I will not pursue it. 9  In Théodule-Armand Ribot’s (1890) Psychology of Attention, we come across a distinction between two forms of distraction: dispersion and absorption. This conceptual distinction provides 7

50

S. Geniusas

the following lines: DD forms as a specific world, shaping a particular series of events and creating a story with its own scenario. By contrast, as I have argued elsewhere (Geniusas, 2022a), MW is impatient, underdeveloped, and chaotic. It is less like a video, and more like a photo; or, alternatively, if DD is like a movie, then MW is like a series of unrelated movie trailers that randomly follow each other. MW offers us an image or a set of moving images, yet it doesn’t develop them into a full-­ fledged scenario. Development is prevented, aborted, interrupted: consciousness abandons the phantasmatic images and moves onto other images. In this regard, each MW episode is somewhat like a hypnagogic state which, as Sartre (2006) argues compellingly, remains worldless, while DD is like ND, which is world-constitutive.10 When we are DD, we simultaneously inhabit two separate worlds: the actual world and the dream world. This is what distinguishes DD both from non-lucid ND (which is characterized by full absorption in the imaginary dream world) and MW (which is worldless). In this regard, DD is like lucid ND. Where does the difference between them lie? We can daydream while driving a car, brushing our teeth, or even while reading a paper on DD. By contrast, lucid ND takes place when we are only passively related to the world (we are aware of the actual world, since we are aware that we are dreaming, but our bodies remain motionless and we are not involved in any activities). While lucid ND is a sleeping state, MW is a wakeful state. During lucid ND, consciousness is awake while dreaming; during MW, consciousness is dreaming while awake. We can thus qualify lucid ND as wakeful sleep and DD as sleeping wakefulness. These distinctions help us understand DD in some detail. DD is an intermediary phenomenon that lies between wakefulness and sleep. As such, it shares a number of features with other modes of experience, while at the time same it is a matter of inhabiting two worlds simultaneously in a way that distinguishes DD from all other experiences. Yet we cannot end with these distinctions. It is still not clear how we are to distinguish DD and phantasy. In his remarkable and often overlooked study, Conrad (1968) maintains that the common phenomenological distinction between presentations (Gegenwärtigungen) and presentifications (Vergegenwärtigungen), i.e., between original experiences and reproductions, does not suffice to clarify the richness of psychic life. This is because in common phenomenological accounts, both presentations and presentifications us with a solid basis to draw a further distinction between MW and DD. Distracted people are the ones “whose intelligence is unable to fix itself with any degree of persistence, and who pass incessantly from one idea to another.” They are, Ribot notes, in “a perpetual state of mobility and dispersion” and their thoughts are characterized by the “incessant transition from one idea to another.” Ribot continues: “But the term ‘distraction’ is also applied to cases entirely different from this,” to “people who, wholly absorbed by some idea, are also really ‘distracted’ in regard to what takes place around them […]. Such people appear incapable of attention for the very reason that they are very attentive” (78–79). Against such a background, we could say that MW is a mode of dispersion, while DD is a mode of absorption. 10  Sartre describes the hypnagogic state as “the dream that cannot form itself” (2006, 45). Analogously, one can speak of MW as a daydream that cannot form itself.

3  Daydreaming and Self-Awareness

51

are addressed from the same egoic standpoint, viz., that of presence. Yet not all experiences are lived from the standpoint of the here and now. Besides such experiences, there is a whole group of other experiences that Conrad qualifies as displaced experiences. This provides us with a basis to distinguish DD from the much more common forms of phantasy. In contrast to the latter, DD is a mode of wakeful phantasy-­consciousness that engages in its own phantasies from a displaced standpoint. DD-consciousness is phantasy-consciousness that is absorbed in phantasies.11

Daydreaming and Self-Awareness Our next task is to understand how consciousness can inhabit two separate worlds simultaneously: the actual world and the dream world. Consider Husserl’s (2012) analysis of attention in Ideas I, where he introduces a distinction between three modes of attention: attentional focus, co-attention, and inattention (Husserl, 2012, 193). These distinctions are of great importance in the present context. While DD is attentionally focused on the dream world, it is also simultaneously either co-­ attentive or inattentive to the actual world. This co-attentiveness, or inattentiveness (the difference between them will soon be clarified), are essential rather than accidental features of DD. Precisely because of them, DD consciousness remains bound to the actual world.12 In contemporary literature on spontaneous thought, it is common to draw a distinction between tuning-out and zoning-out as two fundamental modes of DD and MW. Zachary Irving and Evan Thompson suggest that tuning out qualifies “aware MW,” while zoning out refers to “unaware MW” (Irving & Thompson, 2018, 93). In this regard, Irving and Thompson follow the classical analysis of tuning out and zoning out that we come across in Smallwood, McSpadden, and Schooler: Tuning Out: Sometimes when your mind wanders, you are aware that your mind has drifted, but for whatever reason you still continue to read. This is what we refer to as “tuning out” – i.e., when your mind wanders and you know it all along. Zoning Out: Other times when your mind wanders, you don’t realize that your thoughts have drifted away from the text until you catch yourself. This is what we refer to as “zoning out” – i.e., when your mind wanders, but you don’t realize this until you catch it. (2007, 533)

For the moment, let us disregard the distinctions between MW and DD.  Using Husserlian terminology, we can say that while tuning out is a matter of being co-­ attentive to the surrounding world, zoning out is qualified by one’s inattentiveness  Here is how Julien Varendonck describes DD in his classical study: “we pass for a shorter or longer period into a state of absorption, during which we lose all control over our mental activity, memory taking over the leading part” (1921, 108). 12  Let me note in passing that, because of these structures, we obtain the conceptual means to distinguish DD from non-lucid ND. In contrast to DD, non-lucid ND is fully absorbed in the dream world, which means: the consciousness of ND is neither co-attentive, nor inattentive to the actual world. 11

52

S. Geniusas

to one’s surroundings; both MW and DD can take the form either of tuning out or of zoning out. Yet here is something else that one should not overlook: these modes of awareness (viz., the awareness of one’s surroundings) are also at the same time modes of self-awareness. Thus, one is co-attentive to one’s surroundings while engaged in DD, and one is at the same time co-attentive to the fact that one is DD. By contrast, when one is inattentive to one’s surroundings while DD, one is also inattentive to the fact that one is DD. In the case of DD, self-awareness and world-awareness go hand-in-hand. They are inseparably tied to each other. Such a phenomenological reinterpretation of tuning out and zoning out is philosophically rewarding for it brings into question the common assumption that only tuning out, and not zoning out, is characterized by self-awareness and world-­ awareness. Recall that this is the view endorsed both by Irving and Thompson (2018) and by Smallwood et al. (2007). Yet one must stress that inattentiveness is a mode of attention. Instead of drawing a crude distinction between “aware DD” and “unaware DD,” it is phenomenologically more appropriate to rely on a subtler distinction between explicit and implicit self-awareness that accompanies DD. While tuning out is characterized by explicit self-awareness, zoning out is qualified by implicit self-awareness.13 Suppose I am in a departmental meeting and my colleague is giving a report on the departmental budget. If I start DD during the report, I still remain attentive to what is happening around me. Suppose my colleague asks me a question. If I am co-attentive, then I can hear the question and answer it. By contrast, if I am inattentive, then I will still hear my colleague speaking and respond, although only by asking my colleague to repeat the question. By contrast, if I fall asleep during the meeting and start ND, then I do not respond. In the case of ND, it would be inaccurate to claim that I am inattentive to what is taking place around me. To be inattentive to x, y, or z, I must still experience x, y, or z. Yet the events that take place in the surroundings lie beyond the experience of sleeping consciousness. When sleeping consciousness experiences the events taking place in the surroundings, it either wakes up or reinterprets and absorbs them into the dream world. This distinction between implicit and explicit self-awareness is important for it allows us not to conflate DD with non-lucid ND. Indeed, here lies the fundamental distinction between these different modes of experience: while non-lucid ND lacks either explicit or implicit self-awareness, DD is either explicitly or implicitly self-­ aware. In contrast to non-lucid ND, a characteristic feature of lucid ND is that it is characterized only by implicit self-awareness.

 More precisely, one could draw a further distinction between pathological and non-pathological DD. With this distinction in mind, one could further state, following Varendonck’s classical psychoanalytic analysis, that “the neurotic is the victim of his unconsciousness, and he is unaware of it, while the normal day-dreamer never loses the notion of reality” (1921, 16). More precisely: while non-pathological DD is either explicitly or at least implicitly aware of reality (and thus self-­ aware), the pathological form of DD is characterized by the loss of self-awareness. Thus, as Varendonck puts it, “in principle autistic thinking can be conscious as well as unconscious” (19). 13

3  Daydreaming and Self-Awareness

53

At this point we can say that all DD is self-aware, although not always in the same sense of the term. While in some cases we are explicitly aware that we are DD, in other cases we are only implicitly aware that we are. That is, in some cases of DD, we are co-attentive to the surrounding world and to ourselves; in other cases, we are inattentive to both. So far, I have focused exclusively on just one sense in which one can speak of self-awareness in DD: when one daydreams, one can be aware that one is DD. Besides being aware that one is DD, one can also be aware of oneself in the daydream. This is another feature that distinguishes DD from wakeful perceptions on the one hand, and non-lucid dreams on the other. When we perceive things around us, we are at least implicitly aware that we perceive them, yet it would be absurd to speak of being aware of ourselves in our perceptions. By contrast, when it comes to non-lucid ND, we are aware of ourselves in the dream, although not aware that we are dreaming. In contrast to both, when we daydream, we are aware of ourselves in both senses of the term: we are aware, at least implicitly, that we are DD and aware of ourselves in the daydream. This doesn’t yet allow us to grasp the unique structure of self-awareness that characterizes DD. This is because memory, anticipation, and phantasy are also characterized by such a twofold structure of self-awareness. Recollective consciousness is aware that it is remembering and aware of itself in the recollection. If I have an intuitive recollection of having a coffee with a good old friend, I “see” us in the coffee shop, while at the same time I am aware that I am having this recollection. This is also the case with anticipation: anticipatory consciousness is aware that it is anticipating and aware of itself in the anticipation. If I have an intuitive anticipation of seeing my friend in the near future, I “see” the smile on his face as he greets me, while at the same time I am aware that I am living through this anticipation. And so too with phantasy: one is aware that one is phantasizing and aware of oneself in the phantasy. If I phantasize that I am taking a walk by the sea, then I “see” myself walking by the sea while also being aware that I am having this phantasy. Is there anything specific about the type of self-awareness that characterizes DD? The distinction is to be found not in the content of experience, but in the mode of experiencing. DD is an experience of displacement. When one daydreams, one is displaced from the here and now to the there and then. Nonetheless, in contrast to non-lucid ND, DD-consciousness remains aware of the here and now, although not in the primary sense of the term: the awareness of the here and now is only a marginal background awareness. DD-consciousness first and foremost lives in the daydream, while it still remains anchored in the actual world. We can draw a further distinction between a broad and a narrow sense of DD. In the broad sense, all wakeful experiences of displacement, insofar as they open up a world, can be characterized as modes of DD, irrespective of whether one is displaced into the past, the future, or a purely phantasmatic realm. In the narrow sense, one can further distinguish DD from absorbed memories and absorbed anticipations (which Conrad, 1968 calls pre-experience [Vorerleben] and post-experience [Nacherleben]). In such a narrower sense, DD is an experience of displacement that transposes consciousness from the here and now to the purely phantasmatic field,

54

S. Geniusas

which is not only cut off from the present, but also from the past and future. Yet as emphasized above, this transposition does not amount to a complete liberation. DD-consciousness cannot liberate itself from the here and now; throughout all wakeful displacement, consciousness remains marginally bound to the here and now, either in the form of explicit or implicit awareness. To summarize, we can say that the self-awareness that characterizes DD entails a number of distinguishing features. (1) It is to be understood in a twofold sense, both as the awareness that one is DD and the awareness of oneself in the daydream. (2) The awareness that one is DD is only marginal, since it occurs in the background of consciousness and can be either explicit (co-attentiveness) or implicit (inattentiveness). (3) DD-consciousness is not just aware of itself in the daydream. It is in fact absorbed in DD, which means: DD-consciousness is aware of itself in the daydream as the displaced zero-point of orientation and as a displaced agent of action from which all the displaced perceptions and displaced actions unfold. (4) Depending on how broadly or narrowly one understands DD, the self-awareness of oneself in the daydream is an experience of displacement either only in the phantasmatic field, or also in the absorbed past and the absorbed future.

Daydreaming, Self-Awareness, and Ichspaltung As we saw, DD is paradoxical in that it marks a conscious distance from actuality while at the same time keeping consciousness bound to actuality. Yet this is not the only sense in which DD is paradoxical. DD belongs to the group of those experiences which cannot be qualified either as purely active or as purely passive. When I daydream, thoughts themselves come and I abandon myself to them: in this regard, DD is passive. Yet nobody else puts these thoughts into my mind: consciousness itself passively entertains those thoughts that it generates. Thus, DD is also active. Recall the peculiar structure of experience, which in Husserlian phenomenology is usually addressed under the heading of the splitting of the ego (Ichspaltung). In classical Husserlian phenomenology, this structure was primarily reserved for phantasy consciousness, although it also fits recollective- and anticipatory-­consciousness. According to Husserl, there is no phantasy experience without the splitting of the ego into the phantasizing and the phantasized ego. For instance, when I phantasize that I am driving in a tuk tuk from one temple to another in Angkor Wat, my experience is inseparable from the phantasizing ego, understood as the actual subject of experience. Yet my experience also entails a projected ego – the I that is in the tuk tuk in Angkor Wat. In the present context, I wish to ask if this structure of experience can also be said to qualify DD. The answer to this question is quite complicated. Consider, first, how Conrad (1968, 59–62) addresses this question. He understands DD as a modality of displaced experience. He speaks of a real, or actual, DD (eigentliche Träumerei) and contends that, in contrast to wakeful phantasy, DD is not characterized by the splitting of the ego (Spaltung des Icherlebens). In the case of pure DD (reine Träumerei),

3  Daydreaming and Self-Awareness

55

only one side of the egoic bifurcation sees the light of day: one is absorbed in one’s phantasies. Still, Conrad further emphasizes that DD is not a complete absorption (völlige Ertrunkensein), and in this regard it differs from the absolute immersion (absolute Eingetauchtsein) in the dream (59). This view strikes me as incoherent. If DD is not characterized by the splitting of the ego, then DD must be an instance of complete absorption and complete displacement. One must choose between the splitting of the ego and complete absorption; one cannot have it both ways. If there is no splitting of the ego in DD, then the ego is fully absorbed in its own DD; in such a case, there is no longer any distinction to be drawn between DD and non-lucid ND. Yet Conrad is unwilling to accept such an implication. In this regard, Bachelard’s account of DD in his Poetics of Reverie is highly relevant. Bachelard qualifies the splitting of the ego as “the ontological paradox” of reverie: “by transporting the dreamer into another world, reverie makes the dreamer into a person different from himself” (1969, 79). Yet, Bachelard continues, “this other person is still himself, the double of himself.” Bachelard further compares this with the form of splitting that psychiatrists speak of when they address split personalities, and he further contends that “reverie  – and not the nightdream  – retains mastery over its splittings.” As he further notes, “in reality, reverie splits the being more gently, more naturally. And with what variety!” (80) There is much more that Bachelard has to say about self-splitting in reverie, yet a further inquiry would take us too far afield. I would like to accept Bachelard’s remarks as a confirmation that not only conscious phantasy, but DD too, is qualified by the splitting of the ego. Yet the distinction here drawn is half-finished. James Morley – the only contemporary phenomenologist I know of to have focused on DD in his research for more than two decades – contends that DD entails not two, but three egological positions, which are occupied by what he calls the habitual subject, the enacting subject, and the directing spectator (1998, 126–128). The presence of the habitual subject explains how a person can continue to respond competently to the environment while preoccupied with DD. Thus, while riding in the car on a road trip, I may start DD, yet even if I do, I won’t lose control of the car. This means that when I daydream, I continue to be aware of myself as the habitual subject of it. The concept of the enacting subject refers to the presence of the daydreamed ego in a DD experience. In the words of one of Morley’s interviewees, “I was completely the actor” (127). Yet, according to Morley, this twofold, classical distinction does not suffice. The structure of DD also entails the presence of a third ego: the directing spectator. This concept refers to the subject who acts as a director, or a playwright – the one who writes the daydream scenario. One of Morley’s interviewees described this role as “playing God.” Another interviewee described it as a matter of “playing with puppets […] where you are pulling all the strings” (128). What is at stake here is the plain recognition on the part of DD subjects that they were in control of the DD experience. The explicit recognition that the DD experience entails the awareness of oneself as the directing spectator is of great importance for a phenomenology of DD.  It allows one to explain why, as Sigmund Freud had already argued, adults are ashamed

56

S. Geniusas

of their daydreams and are generally unwilling to reveal them to others. Note that when it comes to night dreams, the situation is significantly different: adults often have no problems speaking about them in an open way. How are we to understand this difference? It concerns the fact that DD is accompanied by the awareness of oneself as the directing spectator, while ND lacks such self-awareness. Insofar as I am aware of myself as the directing spectator of my daydreams, I am unwilling to reveal their content to anyone, for if I did, it would become clear that, as Freud insists, this strange content of my DD expresses my suppressed erotic wishes, ambitions, and fears. It thereby becomes understandable why, as Freud puts it, “we would rather confess our misdeeds than tell anyone our phantasies” (1969, 443). Similarly, this explicit recognition that the DD experience entails the awareness of oneself as the directing spectator also enables us to understand the distinction between DD and ND that we come across in Bachelard’s The Poetics of Reverie: “The night dream is a dream without a dreamer. On the contrary, the dreamer of reverie remains conscious enough to say: it is I who dreams the reverie, it is I who am content to dream my reverie, happy with this leisure in which I no longer have the task of thinking” (1969, 22). The dreamer of reverie remains self-aware as the directing spectator and this is why he can proclaim: I am the one who dreams this daydream. At this point we can say that DD is self-aware in three fundamental senses of the term. (1) While DD, the conscious subject is aware of itself as the habitual subject (that is, as the actual DD ego), and as we saw, this self-awareness can be both explicit and implicit. (2) The DD subject is also self-aware as the enacting subject, or the daydreamed ego. (3) Last but not least, the DD subject is also self-aware as the directing spectator who writes the script in accordance with which all activities unfold.14

The Constitutive Function of Daydreaming Let us consider an important objection: It would be a crude misunderstanding to think that phenomenology’s goal is to describe various peculiarities of consciousness. Rather, phenomenology was always concerned with the clarification of the eidetic features of conscious life as well as its constitutive functions. Yet even though the foregoing discussion has shown that DD has distinctive eidetic features, this does not yet allow us to claim that it also has important constitutive functions. Much like phantasy or sleep, it appears to give consciousness a chance to take a  Here we can also recall Varendonck’s (1921) insightful reflections. When we daydream, the mind can take on three different attitudes: “it may give us the impression that our personality is thinking, or that it is mainly acting, or that it is simply a spectator. In the two first instances we have the feeling that our mind is active; in the last we feel that it is passive” (89). There is a telling correspondence between thinking, acting, and observing, of which Varendonck here speaks, and between the roles of the habitual subject, the enacting subject, and the directing spectator that Morley singles out in his analysis. In this regard, phenomenological and psychoanalytic approaches to DD can complement each other in significant ways. 14

3  Daydreaming and Self-Awareness

57

break from what phenomenologists such as Husserl have called “world constitution.” We thus have to go back to the question with which we started: Why should DD be of interest to phenomenologists? Imagine the impossible: a person incapable of DD. Such a person’s wakeful life would be fully confined to the actual. She would perceive things around her, and she would remember the past and anticipate the future, yet her capacity to imagine things different from how they are would be severely constrained. Being bound to the actual, she would not be able to consider alternative scenarios. Such a person would in effect be similar to the one that Jorge Luis Borges describes in “Funes, His Memory”: no single detail happening around such a person would escape attention, yet, as Borges notes, “I suspect nevertheless that he was not very good at thinking. To think is to ignore (or forget) differences, to generalize, to abstract” (1999, 137). DD provides consciousness with the rudimentary distance that one needs in order to think. In contemporary psychology and cognitive sciences, DD is understood as a member of a broader family of mental phenomena that are usually labeled as “spontaneous thoughts.” In the literature on spontaneous thoughts, we come across a suggestion that such modes of experience as DD and MW are the default strategies of consciousness: when not engaged in any specific task-oriented thinking, our minds will be MW and DD (Spirada, 2018). With these discussions in mind, one can supplement Borges’ line of thought by further stating that thinking is a matter of ignoring differences, of generalizing, of abstracting because before it is anything else, thinking is DD. To put it phenomenologically, DD is cogito at birth, a nascent cogito; or as some psychologists contend, DD is “the default state.”15 All other modes of the cogito are in this regard forms of DD held in check and subjected to our control. This suggests that a person incapable of DD is also incapable of thinking. DD is the unrestrained cogito: it is an embryonic form of the cogito that entertains ideas in the form of sensory images. It is a cogito that is not yet guided by this or that goal, not yet bound by this or that rule. In short, it is a wild cogito, a cogito untamed: an inchoate form of the cogito that is free, both thematically and methodologically. Precisely because it is free, consciousness can also design the method it wishes to follow and the goals it wishes to achieve. We can identify DD as a nascent cogito that underlies all methodologically-guided and task-oriented thinking. If this is correct, then one can claim that the constitutive function of DD is fundamental and that it is to be clarified genetically, i.e., by recognizing that DD is a default mode of the cogito which lies at the origins of thinking and makes highly diverse constitutive achievements possible. To avoid a possible misunderstanding,

 One of the reasons for the choice of this term in psychology is that, from a neurological point of view, when we are DD, our brain uses a network, identified as the default network. This network includes areas of the brain such as the medial prefrontal cortex (which helps to imagine ourselves and the thoughts and feelings of others), the posterior cingulate cortex (which shows personal memories from the brain), and the parietal cortex (which stores episodic memories). The default network is activated when attention switches from task-oriented thinking to MW or DD.  The default network generates stimulus-independent thoughts. 15

58

S. Geniusas

let me stress that DD is a default mode of thinking and not a default mode of experience. DD is only conceivable as a modification: it modifies the way things appear, the way scenarios unfold, or the way we act in the world. Something must already be given in experience if DD is to be possible. Yet to claim that DD is a modification is by no means to denigrate its significance. As a modification, DD is a manifestation of spontaneity and freedom: consciousness itself generates the sensory images to which it then passively relates. This spontaneity and this freedom lie at the bottom of every cogito. The genetic account of the origins of thinking that we come across in classical phenomenology must therefore be supplemented with a chapter on the phenomenology of DD.  The view I am here proposing can therefore be understood as a supplement to the classical genetic account in phenomenology which identifies sensory experience (Erfahrung) as the pre-predicative origin of all judgments and thus of thinking (Husserl, 1973). I called DD an unrestrained form of the cogito. This makes it understandable why in Freud’s classical studies (2010, 79–80, 537; Breuer & Freud, 1981, 22), DD was considered to be a nascent form of various pathologies. DD becomes pathological when DD-consciousness loses the awareness that it is DD. DD is Janus-faced: as cogito untamed, DD is the source of diverse forms of thinking and of diverse pathologies.

Conclusion In the Introduction, I suggested that our understanding of the life of consciousness will remain severely limited for as long as we ignore DD. In what ways, then, does the phenomenology of DD enrich our understanding of the life of consciousness? I would like to conclude by offering three answers to this question. First, the phenomenology of DD here offered forces us to abandon the dichotomous view that sets wakefulness and sleep in sharp opposition to one another. Yet just as there is wakefulness in sleep (lucid ND), so also is there sleep in wakefulness (DD). The life of consciousness is characterized by the intertwining of sleep and wakefulness. Such an intertwining does not refer to anything exceptional or unusual, but rather qualifies ordinary experiences.16  I have employed concepts that I borrow from Merleau-Ponty’s late phenomenology, for more so than other thinkers in this philosophical tradition, Merleau-Ponty emphasizes the importance of overcoming the sharp distinction between passivity and activity and of recognizing passivity behind all activity. Merleau-Ponty speaks of passivity as the “‘softness in the dough’ of consciousness,” of “constitutional passivity, germ of sleep, disease, death present even within the acts” (2010, 136). He calls this “lateral passivity.” In this regard, DD appears to be the prime instance of the “oneirism of wakefulness,” which, according to Merleau-Ponty, qualifies wakeful experiences. In his Lectures on Passivity, to which I am here referring, Merleau-Ponty engages in a critical discussion of Sartre’s The Imaginary, and especially of what he identifies as Sartre’s “activism.” He maintains that “waking and sleep are less heterogeneous than Sartre says” (147). Against the Sartrean background, Merleau-Ponty goes on to address the intertwining of passivity and activity 16

3  Daydreaming and Self-Awareness

59

Second, we can take this to mean that the life of consciousness is not confined to the here and now. Besides those experiences which unfold from the present standpoint, there is also another group of experiences which we can qualify as absorbed, or displaced, experiences (Geniusas, 2021b). DD makes it clear that such experiences of displacement are not pathological exceptions, but regular occurrences. Third, the phenomenological analysis of DD brings to light that different modes of experience are characterized by different modes of self-awareness. We have grown accustomed to addressing self-awareness as a monolithic feature of conscious life, as a general structure without which no experience would be possible. I do not want to underestimate the importance of these analyses, yet at the same time I wish to stress that self-awareness can be spoken of in many ways and that, to a large extent, different modes of experience are marked by different types of self-­ awareness. Phenomenologists, among other philosophers and psychologists, have been successful in showing that all experiences are pre-reflectively and pre-­ objectively self-aware. We can nonetheless state that the life of consciousness cannot be understood in sufficient detail if our accounts are focused only on general features of conscious life. Something is missing, viz., a clear recognition that different modes of experience are marked by different modes of self-awareness (Colombetti, 2011; Geniusas, 2022a). Consciousness relates to itself pre-reflectively in a plethora of ways. The three moments I have singled out under the heading of the habitual subject, the enacting subject, and the directing subject intertwine in a unique way in the DD experience.

References Bachelard, G. (1969). The poetics of reverie: Childhood, language and the cosmos (D. Russell, Trans.). Beacon Press. Borges, J. L. (1999). Collected fictions (A. Hurley, Trans.). Penguin Books. Breuer J., & S. Freud. 1981. Studies of hysteria (J. Strachey, Trans.). Avon Books. Caughey, J. L. (1984). Imaginary social worlds: A cultural approach. University of Nebraska Press. Colombetti, G. (2011). Varieties of pre-reflective self-awareness: Foreground and background bodily feelings in emotional experience. Inquiry: Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, 54(3), 293–313. Conrad, T. (1968). Zur Wesenslehre des psychischen Lebens und Erlebens. Martinus Nijhoff. Dorsch, F. (2015). Focused daydreaming and mind-wandering. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 6(4), 791–813. Ehn, B., & Löfgren, O. (2010). The secret world of doing nothing. University of California Press.

in such terms as “a quasi-perceptual character of dreams.” Yet one has to admit that Merleau-­ Ponty’s central ambition in the Lectures on Passivity is to show that all sleeping consciousness is to a degree awake and that all wakeful consciousness is to a degree asleep. What I find missing in these lectures, as well as in Merleau-Ponty’s other writings, is a sustained analysis of the differences between dreamless sleep, non-lucid and lucid ND, DD, MW and other forms of spontaneous thoughts. While the general approach that Merleau-Ponty takes in these lectures blazes the trail for such analyses, we do not encounter them in Merleau-Ponty’s own writings.

60

S. Geniusas

Fox, K., & Christoff, K. (Eds.). (2018). The oxford handbook of spontaneous thought: Mind-­ wandering, creativity and dreaming. Oxford University Press. Freud, S. (1969). Creative writers and day-dreaming. In S. M. Cahn & A. Meskin (Eds.), Aesthetics: A comprehensive anthology (pp. 441–449). Harper & Row, Publishers. Freud, S. (2010). The interpretation of dreams (J. Strachey, Trans.). Avon Books. Geniusas, S. (2021a). Conscious and unconscious phantasy and the phenomenology of dreams. Research in Phenomenology, 51(2), 178–199. Geniusas, S. (2021b). Grundlinien einer Phänomenologie der Versunkenheit. In F.  Neufeld, C.  Pasqualin, A.  K. Rönhede, & S.  Wu (Eds.), Leben in lebendigen Fragen. Zwischen Kontinuität und Pluralität (pp. 367–390). Verlag Karl Alber. Geniusas, S. (2022a). Prolegomena to a phenomenology of mind-wandering. Phenomenology and Cognitive Science (Published online). Geniusas, S. (2022b). Modes of self-awareness: Perception, dreams, memory. Husserl Studies, 38(2), 151–170. Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction ritual: Essays in face to face behavior. New York: Pantheon. Husserl, E. (1973). Experience and judgment: Investigations into the genealogy of logic. (L. Churchill & K. Ameriks, Trans.). Northwestern University Press. Husserl, E. (2012). Ideas: General introduction to pure phenomenology (W. R. B. Gibson, Trans.). Routledge Classics. Irving, Z. (2016). Mind-wandering is unguided attention: Account for the ‘purposeful’ wanderer. Philosophical Studies, 173, 547–571. Irving, Z. (2021). Drifting and directed minds: The significance of mind-wandering for mental agency. The Journal of Philosophy, 118(11), 614–644. Irving, Z., & Thompson, E. (2018). The philosophy of mind-wandering. In Fox and Christoff, 2018, 87–96. James, W. (1983). The principles of psychology: Volumes 1 and 2. Dover Publications, Inc. Klinger, E., & Cox, W. M. (1987). Dimensions of thought flow in everyday life. Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 7(2), 105–128. Klinger, E. (1999). Thought flow: Properties and mechanisms underlying shifts in content. In J. A. Singer & P. Salovey (Eds.), At play in the fields of consciousness: Essays in honor of Jerome L. Singer (pp. 29–50). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers. Klinger, E. (2009). Daydreaming and fantasizing: Thought flow and motivation. In K. D. Markman, W. M. P. Klein, & J. A. Suhr (Eds.), Handbook of imagination and mental simulation (pp. 225–239). Psychology Press. Lohmar, D. (2018). Denken ohne Sprache: Phänomenologie des nicht-sprachlichen Denkens bei Mensch und Tier im Licht der Evolutionsforschung, Primatologie and Neurologie. Springer. Merleau-Ponty, M. (2010). Institution and passivity: Course notes from the college de France (1954–1955). Northwestern University Press. Metzinger, T. (2013). The myth of cognitive agency. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, Article 931. Metzinger, T. (2018). Why is mind-wandering interesting for philosophers? In Fox and Christoff, (pp. 97–112). Morley, J. (1998). The private theater: A phenomenological investigation of DD. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 29(1), 116–134. Ribot, T. (1890). The psychology of attention. Open Court Publishing Company. Sartre, J. P. (2006). The imaginary: A phenomenological psychology of the imagination (J. Weber. Trans.). Routledge. Schmitz, H. (2009). Der Leib, der Raum und die Gefühle. Aisthesis Verlag. Smallwood, J., McSpadden, M., & Schooler, J. (2007). The lights are on but no one’s home: Meta-­awareness and the decoupling of attention when the mind wanders. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 14(3), 527–533.

3  Daydreaming and Self-Awareness

61

Spirada, C. (2018). An exploration/exploitation trade-off between mind-wandering and goal-­ directed thinking. In Fox and Christoff, (pp. 23–34). Strannegård, M. (2009). Hotell Speciell. Liber. Sutton, J. (2010). “Carelessness and inattention: Mind-wandering and the Physiology of Fantasy from Locke to Hume.” In: Wolfe, Charles and Gal, Ofer (eds.), The Body as Object and Instrument of Knowledge: Embodied Empiricism in Early Modern Science. Dordrecht: Springer, 243–264. Thompson, E. (2015). Waking, dreaming, being: Self and consciousness in neuroscience, meditation, and philosophy. Columbia University Press.

Part II

Embodied Self-Awareness: Incorporation, Kinesthesis, and Sexuality

Chapter 4

Varieties of Incorporation: Beyond the Blind Man’s Cane Giovanna Colombetti

Introduction It is common in the philosophical tradition of phenomenology to insist  – contra Descartes – that we experience ourselves not as immaterial thinking things but as bodily or corporeal beings. Among the most influential classical phenomenological texts on the body are Edmund Husserl’s second volume of Ideas and Merleau-­ Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception. Important reflections can also be found in Maine de Biran, Bergson, Scheler, Sartre, Beauvoir, Henri, Patočka, and others. This rich tradition is reflected in a lively contemporary debate, which often combines approaches from classical phenomenology, cognitive science, and analytic philosophy of mind (as in the works of Varela, Thompson, Gallagher, Zahavi, Noë, Ratcliffe, Legrand, De Preester, de Vignemont, Leder, Shusterman, Depraz, and many others).1 This body of literature is quite diverse and complex, and has advanced several notions to describe bodily experience, such as the lived body (Leib), the body schema, the body image, bodily ownership, the sense of agency, the absent body, the transparent body, bodily dys-appearance, etc. A phenomenon also discussed in this literature is that of incorporation: literally, the integration of something into the body (from the Latin in, in; and corpus, -oris, body). As Merleau-Ponty (1945) argues, our bodies can incorporate a variety of habits through practice and repetition. In fact, for Merleau-Ponty, the lived body is

 Even this list is only a small subset of the ever-increasing literature on embodiment, which includes studies of gender, race, disability, illness, psychiatric disorders, elite sport, performance, meditation, chronic pain, and more. 1

G. Colombetti (*) University of Exeter, Exeter, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Geniusas (ed.), Varieties of Self-Awareness, Contributions to Phenomenology 121, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39175-0_4

65

66

G. Colombetti

a sedimented, habitual body: it is continuously shaped by our perceiving, being, and acting in the world, retaining a memory (a “body memory”) of those actions and perceptions. The term “incorporation” has also been used more recently to refer specifically to the peculiar experience of coming to feel objects as part of (i.e., as constitutive of) one’s body.2 In an earlier writing (Colombetti, 2016), I called this experience object-incorporation, to single it out as a special case of the more general phenomenon of habit-incorporation. Merleau-Ponty (1945) himself had already discussed instances of object-incorporation, as in his famous example of the blind man’s cane. More recently, we find discussions of object-incorporation in post-­ phenomenology (Ihde, 1979; Verbeek, 2008). Object-incorporation (henceforth just “incorporation”) is the main topic of this chapter. Discussions of this phenomenon have focused on the body schema, understood primarily as the tacit or pre-reflective moving and perceiving body. Not much attention has been paid to the fact that we can incorporate objects in other ways, too, because we experience ourselves as bodily not just in the sense implied by the notion of body schema. Specifically, in this chapter I propose that we can incorporate objects into the body image and into the seen body. After presenting the classical notion of incorporation (Section “Body-schema incorporation”), I introduce the other two cases (in Sects. “Body-image incorporation” and “Seen-body incorporation”), concluding with some reflections on their relationship (in Sect. “Relations”).

Body-Schema Incorporation Most writings on incorporation have focused on incorporation into the body schema, understood primarily as the tacit or pre-reflective moving and perceiving body (sensorimotor body schema). A classic example, already found in Merleau-Ponty, is the blind man’s cane. Merleau-Ponty notes that a blind man who has become used to exploring his surroundings with a cane ceases to experience the cane as an external object, or as a tool for measuring distances. Rather, he experiences the cane in many respects as he experiences his body: The blind man’s cane has ceased to be an object for him, it is no longer perceived for itself; rather, the cane’s furthest point is transformed into a sensitive zone, it increases the scope and the radius of the act of touching and has become analogous to a gaze. In the exploration of objects, the length of the cane does not explicitly intervene nor act as a middle term: the blind man knows its length by the position of the objects, rather than the position of the objects through the cane’s length. The position of objects is given immediately by the scope of the gesture that reaches them and in which, beyond the potential extension of the arm, the radius of action of the cane is included. (1945, 144)

 From now on, unless otherwise specified, whenever I write “body” I mean the lived body – the subjectively experienced or phenomenal body, rather than the physiological body as measured in a scientist’s lab. 2

4  Varieties of Incorporation: Beyond the Blind Man’s Cane

67

The cane is “a sensitive zone” (at least at the level of the tip that touches the ground) which is “included” into the “gesture” of reaching objects and is “analogous to a gaze.” Using Merleau-Ponty’s terminology, we can say that the cane has been incorporated into the body schema. The latter is Merleau-Ponty’s term for the subjective or lived body, primarily experienced tacitly or pre-reflectively as an “I can.” Merleau-Ponty took this term from Head and Holmes (1911) who introduced it to refer to “a postural model of ourselves which constantly changes” (187), depends on previous movements and postures, and is not the same as a “visual image” of oneself.3 In Merleau-Ponty, too, the body schema is not a visual image of the body. It is a tacit global awareness of one’s body as a dynamic whole situated in the environment, typically working in habitual and non-explicit ways. For example, when I walk up a flight of stairs (a familiar action), I do not think about my body, and in particular I do not visualize it. Rather, I am aware of myself globally and tacitly as moving and perceiving. I do not reflect on what I am doing, yet I am not completely unconscious of it either: I retain a tacit or pre-reflective awareness that I am in or to the world (être au monde) as a corporeal being. Likewise, when I habitually grasp and manipulate familiar objects, such as a cup or a pen, I am aware of my actions but only tacitly or pre-reflectively.4 Moreover, in Merleau-Ponty, the body schema is also a condition of possibility for my experience of the world. Like Kant’s transcendental schema, the body schema is not an image in the sense of an object of awareness, but is rather that which enables and structures my awareness of objects (Carman, 1999). The example of the blind man’s cane illustrates the important idea, already found in Head and Holmes (1911), that the body schema is not fixed but constantly changing. Merleau-Ponty speaks of the continuous sedimentation and habituation that characterizes our body-schematic being-in-the world.5 As we learn new sensorimotor skills (e.g., walking up stairs, typing, playing the piano), our tacit “I can” changes accordingly, and new habits are acquired from previously sedimented ones. To learn a new skill and to make it a habit is, for Merleau-Ponty, to come to inhabit a new world because our body schema is what opens up the world for us in specific ways. Changes in the body schema bring about changes in the lived world. For example, as one learns to climb, one comes to “enact” the world in a new way: ledges and indentations that one may previously not even have seen now stand out from the rock as possible handholds and footholds. Similarly, as a blind man habituates to

 Other influences on Merleau-Ponty were the works of the neuropsychiatrists Paul Schilder (1886–1940) and Jean Lhermitte (1877–1959), who also spoke of the “body image.” As Gallagher (2005) points out, the notions of the body schema and the body image have often been conflated in both science and philosophy, giving rise to various confusions. At any rate, it is clear that MerleauPonty used “body schema” (“schéma corporel”) to refer to a non-visual or non-imagistic form of bodily self-awareness. See also Halák (2021) for a useful recent discussion of Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the body schema, on the basis of his notes for lessons at the Collège de France. 4  The term pre- reflective is often used instead of unreflective to suggest that, although something is not attended or reflected on, it can become reflective with a shift of attention. 5  The geological metaphor of sedimentation comes from Husserl (1954). 3

68

G. Colombetti

exploring the world with a cane, the world shows up for him in new ways  – he comes to inhabit a different world. His lived relations to the objects around him change as he learns to reach objects with the cane and to feel them at its tip; accordingly, his pre-reflective sense of what he can do in the world – his tacit “I can” – also changes. The taking of an object into the pre-reflective experience of one’s bodily “I can” is what I call here body-schema incorporation. There are many other examples illustrating this experience. Merleau-Ponty discusses some: Without any explicit calculation, a woman maintains a safe distance between the feather in her hat and objects that might damage it; she senses where the feather is, just as we sense where our hand is. If I possess the habit of driving a car, then I enter into a lane and see that ‘I can pass’ without comparing the width of the lane to that of the fender, just as I go through a door without comparing the width of the door to that of my body. The hat and the automobile have ceased to be objects whose size and volume would be determined through a comparison with other objects. They have become voluminous powers. (1945, 144)6

Other examples can be found in post-phenomenology – a recent application of phenomenology to our relationship with technology (Ihde, 1979).7 Ihde (2009), for example, argues that artifacts such as writing chalks, eyeglasses, telescopes, and medical probes mediate our experience of the world and “extend” our bodily intentionality (our bodily directedness toward the world). His term for body-schema incorporation is embodiment relations, namely, “relations that incorporate material technologies or artifacts that we experience as taken into our very bodily experience” (42). These relations are characterized by the withdrawal of the artifacts from consciousness: they fade from awareness (entirely or in part), becoming transparent or at least quasi-transparent. Embodied artifacts cease to be “object-like” (experienced as objects) and are instead “means of experience.” Ihde captures this relation formally with a useful simple notation: (human – artifact)

environment

The arrow refers to an intentional relation (a relation of aboutness). The notation makes it clear that, in embodiment relations, the artifact is not on the side of the intentional object, but rather on the side of what does the intending. The intentional object is an aspect of the environment, and what does the intending is the system or compound “(human – artifact),” or human-with-artifact. In the example of the blind man, the cane is part of the system “(human – cane)” that intends (here: explores and perceives) the man’s surroundings.

 The curious example of the feathered hat was already in Head and Holmes: “Anything which participates in the conscious movement of our bodies is added to the model of ourselves and becomes part of these schemata: a woman’s power of localization may extend to the feather in her hat” (1911, 188). 7  “Post-phenomenology” is an unfortunate term, as the prefix “post” implies an overcoming or even a rejection of classical phenomenology (as in “post-modernism” or “post-humanism”), whereas, in fact, post-phenomenological accounts are entirely consistent with classical phenomenology and rely extensively on it (for introductions to post-phenomenology see De Preester, 2010; Ihde, 2015; Rosenberger & Verbeek, 2015). 6

4  Varieties of Incorporation: Beyond the Blind Man’s Cane

69

This notion of incorporation is, admittedly, quite liberal. There is no requirement that the object must anatomically resemble and replace parts of the biological body, as in the case of most prosthetic hands or legs. This is in contrast with narrower conceptions of incorporation, such as that proposed by De Preester and Tsakiris (2009) and De Preester (2011). They draw a distinction between incorporation and “mere extension,” and argue that only artifacts that fit a preexisting body model (an innate and rather fixed neural representation of the anatomical structure of the body) can be properly incorporated. Walking canes and medical probes do not qualify (because, unlike prosthetic limbs, they do not resemble and replace bodily structures represented in the brain’s body model), so they “merely extend” the body. It is not clear, however, why incorporation should be limited in this way. It seems that we feel as part of our bodily self a variety of objects that do not resemble or replace our biological body. One can get used to wearing high heels all day, for example, and accordingly feel taller and slimmer, more confident, and sexier. The experience is, arguably, not one of experiencing just one’s own body differently because one is wearing heels that change one’s way of standing and moving (i.e., one does not experience the heels as mere external objects that causally influence the tacit sense of bodily “I can”). Rather, just as in the case of the blind man’s cane, the heels appear to be taken into the body schema, i.e., to become constitutive of one’s global and tacit bodily sense of what one can do.8 In my experience with high heels, as one takes them off after walking in them for a while, there is a pronounced initial experience of surprise as one feels unexpectedly shorter and notes a marked difference in overall stance and gait; there is also a noticeable difference in how the feet touch and feel the ground. This is similarly the case for hiking boots or ice-­ skates. Relatedly, in a qualitative study (based on written correspondence) of how people relate to the handbag, Kaufmann (2011) notes that some are so used to carrying this accessory that they appear to regard it as “a sort of extension” (157) of themselves, to the point that when they do not carry it, it is as if they were missing a limb: “Not that I often go without it, but it’s very uncomfortable because I always have the sensation that something is missing, that I am not complete. It’s a bit […] like what is said of amputated people, they ‘feel’ the absent limb. Thus, without bag, here I am, as amputated [me voilà comme amputée]” (157; my translation). Some musicians also appear to experience their instruments as parts of their body. In a Guardian article (Hann, 2020), singer and guitarist Brittany Howard remarks: “A special instrument feels like an extra limb. Once you find that one instrument, a replacement is really hard to come by, and you have to introduce yourself to a whole new limb and get used to it all over again.” In the words of the world-renowned cellist Mstislav Rostropovich: There no longer exist relations between [me and my cello]. Some time ago I lost my sense of the border between us […] there I was – and my cello became just a red spot at my belly, like a dissected peritoneum. And actually, I feel it now in this manner, much like a singer seems to feel his vocal chords. I experience no difficulty in playing sounds. Indeed, I give no report to myself on how I speak. Just so, I play music, involuntarily. The cello is my tool no more. (quoted in Zinchenko (1996, 295–296))

 There is extensive information on Quora (n.d.) on what it feels like to wear high heels.

8

70

G. Colombetti

In disability studies, qualitative research suggests that some wheelchair users come to feel the wheelchair as part of their body, including “feeling one” with it and “feeling extended” into it (Papadimitriou, 2008; Sparkes et al., 2018). Finally, if you sit at your desk and place your left hand underneath the desktop while someone taps the desktop with her right hand and at the same time taps your hidden left hand with her left hand (in synchrony), you might come to feel your desktop as a sensitive part of your body that is being tapped. And if someone hits the desktop with a hammer, you are likely to show a skin conductance response as if your own hand had been threatened (Ramachandran & Blakeslee, 1998, 52–54). Clark (2003) discusses this and several other cases to make the general point that our embodiment (our sense of bodily boundaries, location, and action possibilities) is not fixed but highly negotiable. In sum, it seems that body-schema incorporation is a real experience, and that it occurs quite frequently and relatively easily. But is this the only possible form of incorporation?

Body-Image Incorporation The claim that objects can be incorporated into the lived body need not be restricted to the body schema. After all, there are other forms of bodily self-awareness. For example, the notion of the body schema is often contrasted with that of the body image, which generally refers to forms of bodily self-awareness where one’s body is an intentional object of consciousness (De Preester & Knockaert, 2005; Gallagher, 2005; Gallagher & Zahavi, 2008; Ataria et al., 2021).9 Unlike the body schema, the body image is consciousness of or about one’s own body. As Gallagher puts it, “the difference between body image and body schema is like the difference between having a perception of (or belief about, or emotional attitude towards) one’s own body and having a capacity to move one’s own body” (2005, 234; see also Gallagher (2021, 87)).10 Gallagher and Zahavi (2008, 146) similarly characterize the body image as “composed of a system of experiences, attitudes, and beliefs where the object of such intentional states is one’s own body.” Thus characterized, the notion of body image is very broad, encompassing all sorts of intentional relations towards one’s own body. Arguably, these involve markedly different experiences: to think that one’s body is tall, for instance, feels  As always, there are exceptions. In Lacanian psychoanalysis, for example, the body image is understood more specifically as the mirror image with which one comes to identify at a certain stage in development (Van Bunder & Van Vijver, 2005). 10  A complication here is that, as others have also pointed out (Legrand, 2006; Halák, 2021), Gallagher’s own understanding of the body schema is not the same as Merleau-Ponty’s, as Gallagher understands the body schema primarily in physiological terms, as a subpersonal unconscious system. In this chapter I leave the notion of an unconscious body schema aside, and focus instead on Merleau-Ponty’s existential-phenomenological understanding of the body schema as pre-reflective (and thus not unconscious). 9

4  Varieties of Incorporation: Beyond the Blind Man’s Cane

71

different from perceiving that one is tall, or from evaluating being tall as a positive attribute of oneself. At any rate, without wanting to go into a detailed discussion of the body image, we can note here that it is certainly possible to incorporate objects into the body image. Given the breadth of the notion, there are many possibilities which we can capture with a simple, Ihde-style notation: perception thought

 (human – artifact)

emotion

This notation clarifies that in body-image incorporation, the intentional object of various mental attitudes is not just oneself, or just the artifact, but the compound human-with-artifact. Reflecting on a tennis racket while playing – perhaps by thinking that it is old and needs replacing – would not count. Body-image incorporation needs to be an experience specifically about the combination of person and object, such as perceiving the unity of oneself-with-racket while practicing a backhand, thinking about the movement possibilities of oneself-with-prosthesis, feeling good about oneself-on-motorcycle, and so on. If one accepts the distinction between the body schema and the body image (as I do), the distinction between body-schema incorporation and body-image incorporation follows suit. Just as we can experience self-with-artifact pre-reflectively, as a joint system or compound with certain sensorimotor capacities, so too can the self-­ with-­artifact be the intentional object of various experiences. Just as there are influences between the body schema and the body image, there are also influences between body-schema incorporation and body-image incorporation. I discuss these in the final section on “Relations.” In the next section I turn to yet another form of bodily awareness that is sometimes conflated with the body image, but that needs to be clearly distinguished from it (and, likewise, cases of incorporation into it need to be singled out from those of body-image incorporation).

Seen-Body Incorporation This further mode of self-awareness is what I shall call, following Dolezal (2015), the seen body. As the term suggests, this is the experience of being a body seen by others. Sartre (1943, 382) already discussed the body-seen (le corps vu) and contrasted it with the body-existed (le corps existé). Similarly, Dolezal (2015) uses “the seen body” to refer to (the experience of) one’s own body as seen from the perspective of the other (one’s body as a “lived seen body,” as she also puts it). Although Sartre emphasizes the visual dimension of the seen body, we can, of course, be more generally perceived by others – not just through vision but also other

72

G. Colombetti

senses, such as hearing (think of the important role of the voice in conveying an impression of character or personality) and olfaction. By “seen body” I thus refer generally to (the experience of) one’s body as perceived by others.11 Importantly, the seen body need not coincide with how others actually perceive one’s body. I might have a sense that I look nervous and clumsy while giving a lecture, even though others might perceive me as calm and collected; or I might have a sense of looking unkempt and unattractive, when in fact others perceive me otherwise (the reverse is also possible, of course). In other words, the looks of others upon oneself can be just imagined. A famous illustration of the experience of being seen is Sartre’s example of the voyeur in the section of Being and Nothingness titled “The Look” (1943, 276–326). Sartre asks us to imagine that he is alone, spying through a keyhole. While alone, he is “a pure consciousness of things” (283), a subject unreflectively immersed in the world and the objects that appear to him. Yet, suddenly, he hears footsteps and realizes that someone is looking at him. This realization transforms the voyeur from a free, transcendent consciousness (a “for-itself,” in Sartre’s terminology) into a self that exists for the other’s look. As the other sees him, the voyeur’s transcendence is transcended (287): he has become an object for-the-other. This example captures vividly the transformation of self-awareness that occurs when someone feels being looked at. In the subsequent chapter on “The Body,” Sartre also draws a distinction between the body as a “being-for-itself” (my body as I exist it in my dealings with objects in the world, without or prior to the other’s look), the “body-for-others” (my body as seen and objectified by the other), and a combination of the two, namely, the experience of myself as a “body-for-others” (what Sartre calls “the third ontological dimension” of the body). The experience of the voyeur when he feels he has been caught spying is an instance of the latter: the voyeur is now a body-for-others who experiences himself through the other’s look. The term “seen body” refers precisely to such an experience of other-mediated visibility. Unlike the body schema, and like the body image, it refers to an intentional experience of one’s own body – yet an experience of one’s own body as seen by the other. The seen body is a common mode of self-awareness – an experience with which most of us will be familiar, for example, from performing in front of an audience (a family member, a teacher, a classroom, etc.). It is interesting to observe how different one can feel when being looked at by someone, as opposed to acting or performing alone. In my experience, rehearsing a lecture alone never feels like actually giving it. When rehearsing, I am preoccupied mainly with refining the presentation and making sure key ideas come across clearly and coherently. I often also keep the audience in mind when preparing, but the experience I have when I eventually face the classroom is very different and impossible to recreate in imagination.  To move away from the priority of the visual, I thought of using “the perceived body” instead, but this label seems more ambiguous than “the seen body” as it can easily be taken to refer to the body perceived by the subject rather than by another person (and thus collapse into the body image). “The appearing body” does not work well either, given that in phenomenology any mode of presentation in experience is a form of “appearance.” I thus kept “the seen body.” 11

4  Varieties of Incorporation: Beyond the Blind Man’s Cane

73

Feeling the presence of the audience and seeing it look back at oneself can be invigorating or intimidating, or a mixture of both; in any case, it is transformative as it changes one’s relation to oneself. One’s appearance becomes prominent and alive in consciousness in ways that do not seem possible to recreate alone, not even through the use of a mirror. Given the power of the other’s look to influence self-awareness, it is not surprising that many consider speaking in public highly stressful. Moreover, who looks at oneself is also likely to influence how one feels under the other’s gaze. Sartre’s example of the voyeur only implies a generic other, but as I discuss below, one is usually seen by specific others (e.g., a teacher, a spouse, a judge), and it is clear that the looks of some people will induce a more intense seen-body awareness than others.12 The literature on the body image usually does not clarify the difference between the body image and the seen body. As we saw in the previous section, philosophical definitions define the body image as an intentional experience of the body, with no explicit reference to the role of others. In psychology, the prominent body-image researcher Thomas Cash characterizes the body image as the “‘outside view’ of human appearance,” or “what we look like ‘on the outside’” (2004, 1); he also adds that the body image is “the multifaceted psychological experience of embodiment, especially but not exclusively one’s physical appearance. […] It encompasses one’s body-related self-perceptions and self-attitudes, including thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and behaviors” (1–2). These passages may be interpreted as referring to the seen body as a specific instance of the body image, but one cannot be sure because the notion of an “outside view of human appearance” is ambiguous. Without any explicit reference to the role of others in shaping or constituting this outside view, “outside view” may still refer to how one looks “to oneself” (e.g., one’s physical appearance as seen in a mirror). The concepts of the body image and the seen body need to be clearly distinguished, however, so as to capture the experiential difference that characterizes bodily selfperception or self-evaluation when alone (body image), and when in the presence of others looking at oneself (seen body). Compare, for example, using a conscious visual image of one’s body while rehearsing (alone) a motor skill such as a dance routine, and having an image of how one’s body looks to a teacher watching the same rehearsal. The first experience can implicate only the body image, whereas the latter is an instance of the seen body – an other-mediated way of intending one’s own body. In addition, as mentioned, the seen body need not coincide with how others actually perceive one’s body. We can experience the other’s look on ourselves even if there is no physical other present, as the others’ look on oneself can be just imagined. Sartre himself had recognized this possibility: “Of course what most often manifests a look is the convergence of two ocular globes in my direction. But the look will be given just as well on occasion when there is a rustling of branches, or the sound of a footstep followed by silence, or the slight opening of a shutter, or a light movement of a curtain” (1943, 281). In these situations, one may feel seen even though there is no one looking. We can also deliberately imagine being seen.  Thanks to Brian Rappert for raising this point, which deserves more elaboration than I have room for here. 12

74

G. Colombetti

For example, when I rehearse my lecture (alone), I sometimes deliberately imagine being in front of an audience looking at me. When I do so, my relation to myself changes; rather than being only or primarily concerned with the contents of the lecture, I also have a sense of how I (may) look to others. Irrespective of whether or not my imagined seen body corresponds to how my body actually appears, the point is that merely imagining the other’s look can change one’s relation to oneself – there is no need for the actual presence of the other. This effect can be put to good use. Imagining giving a lecture in front of others can make me feel self-conscious. This is a useful effect, as it allows me to practice coping with that experience, so that, hopefully, when I give the real lecture I am not taken by surprise. Other times, imagining the audience can be invigorating as it makes rehearsing the lecture more engaging, at least for a while. Similarly, when I play the piano at home by myself, sometimes I imagine my music teacher’s look – partly to motivate myself not to be complacent in my execution, partly to practice grappling with the anxiety of being looked at (and evaluated) when playing. In both cases, whether the imagined look is inhibiting or motivating, it can be transformative. The imagined seen body is experientially closer to the (actually) seen body than to the body image or the body schema. Having said that, we also need to acknowledge that the physical presence of others usually has a more powerful influence on self-awareness than just an imagined look. Sometimes I ask my husband to come to the piano room and watch me play in order to practice playing in front of someone, because I cannot fully reproduce the latter experience just by imagining it. I am often surprised by how nervous and self-­ conscious I feel when I play in front of my piano teacher, even if I have practiced many times with his look in mind (and he is very supportive). Having asked other amateur musicians, this seems to be a common experience (it will be different for expert musicians). Awareness of being in close proximity to a real other looking at oneself is often unique  – maybe because, unlike when one just imagines being looked at, one has no control over the other’s gaze; and maybe also because the physical presence of an onlooker-in-context is inherently not something that can be adequately or fully reproduced in imagination (the details of the other’s posture and way of looking, for example, are hard to predict, together with those of the broader context of the activity). In sum, it is important to distinguish between the body image and the seen body, as well as between the actual and imagined seen body.13 There is a spectrum of possible intentional experiences of or about one’s body, depending on how implicated the other’s look is: from body-image experiences with no reference to others’ looks 13  Perhaps, one might object, the body image always implies an imagined seen body. In other words, perhaps we never intend our body without at the same implying the other’s look on it; that is, the body image is always other-mediated. I do not think this is the case, although I believe that we do internalize various social norms about how our bodies should move and look. But there is a difference, experientially, between having an image of one’s own body moving or looking “correctly” (e.g., feeling one is moving fluently when dancing, and/or judging that one looks “right” when looking in the mirror) and imagining someone looking at oneself. More could be said about this complex topic, of course.

4  Varieties of Incorporation: Beyond the Blind Man’s Cane

75

(not even imagined ones), to imagined seen-body experiences, to actual seen-­body experiences. Which modality of bodily self-awareness prevails will depend on many factors. Some people may be more prone to one form of awareness than another – more concerned with their looks, for example, for all sorts of historical, cultural, and psychological reasons (as amply discussed in the literature on gender and race). Some people may rarely be free from the other’s look, unable most of the time to act without feeling scrutinized and judged. Having hopefully clarified the notion of the seen body, let us consider cases of incorporation into it. Unless explicitly specified, what follows applies to the seen body, whether imagined or actual. There are, of course, many non-objectual cases of incorporation into the seen body, such as putting up a friendly demeanor (smiling, nodding) in face-to-face interactions. One may work to come across as gentle, affable, assertive, etc. through the use of a certain tone of voice, bodily mannerisms, and so on. Goffman (1959) famously discusses many such techniques of “self-presentation” in face-to-face interactions. We do, however, also incorporate objects into our seen body.14 Object-­incorporation into the seen body occurs when objects are felt as constitutive of how one’s body appears to others. Perhaps the best and most common example is the experience of clothes and accessories (hats, ties, jewelry, shoes, handbags, perfume) as part of the seen body. The fact that wearing certain items can make one feel more or less confident, professional, attractive, at ease, and so on, is an indication that those items are not experienced as mere tools, but as part of “who one is” in the sense of “how one looks” (to others). Feeling transformed through wearing a certain dress is a familiar experience. After 2 years of working primarily from home due to the Covid-19 pandemic, I had become used, like many others I am sure, to wearing rather shabby clothes. When I went back to teaching in class a few months ago, I wore smarter clothes that I had not worn for a long time. The change in feeling was striking. Although the trousers felt less comfortable than my worn-out sweatpants, they changed (the sense of) my look from tattered to well-kempt, from rather sick-­looking to professional. I saw this in the mirror and felt it on my skin as I crossed people on the road. Walking to campus in this “new” look had an invigorating effect – partly due to a regained sense of normality but also of a decent and looked-­after appearing self. Wearing a “power suit” can also have the effect of increasing the sense of confidence; or, at any rate, wearing a power suit will make one feel different, due in part to how one feels one’s suited body looks to others. In concrete encounters, part of the sense of one’s clothed body’s appearance comes from awareness of the other’s gaze on oneself, often accompanied by other signs – from more or less explicitly approving and admiring (or contemptuous) facial expressions to complimentary (or diminishing) utterances. That clothes and accessories can come to be experienced as part of the seen body is also supported by empirical evidence from social psychology and sociology (although a frequent observation in this literature is that the relation between

 Goffman (1959) also mentions dress, furniture, food, and drink as part of the “setting” for the social presentation of the self, but only occasionally (these objects are not the main focus of his analysis). 14

76

G. Colombetti

clothing and self-perception is under-researched). An interesting study was conducted by Adomaitis and Johnson (2005). They interviewed 37 flight attendants who, following a request of the flying company, wore casual attire rather than formal uniforms at work for a certain period of time. While some flight attendants reported feeling physically more comfortable when dressed casually, most reported feeling less confident and professional, less authoritative, less proud and respected, as well as more awkward or embarrassed, and even teased by the passengers. It is clear from their reports that they were aware of the passengers’ and other crews’ looks and experienced themselves through their eyes. One participant explicitly remarked: “Yes. The looks. They [other flight attendants] looked us up and down. You got the feeling that you were ‘trash’” (2005, 98; see also Peluchette and Karl (2007) for similar results and further references). Qualitative studies by Frith and Gleeson (2004, 2008) directly address the relationship between dressing practices and what they call “appearance management.” Unsurprisingly perhaps, they found that both women and men use clothes to manage their seen body. They use baggy clothes to hide what they consider faulty aspects of their bodies, and more revealing clothes to emphasize aspects of the body they consider attractive. In her extensive ethnography on women and clothes, Sophie Woodward (2007) also found that many women are concerned with how they look in their clothes. They worry whether their outfit suits not just the social occasion but also their body. Some have a clear idea of the image they want to project (modern, dynamic, stylish, or even deliberately unkempt), and choose specific clothes to fashion their look and ultimately to be able to enjoy a certain event (such as a dinner in a fashionable restaurant) because they feel “right.” Vice versa, when they think their outfit does not fit, they feel out of place, uncomfortable, or even miserable and anxious. Iris Marion Young (2005), in her essay on women and clothes, also mentions the widespread experience of “seeing oneself being seen” and how that experience influences one’s relation to clothes.15 She refers to Anne Hollander’s (1993) argument, in Seeing through Clothes, that the meaning of clothes in different phases of (Western) history has always been determined by the aesthetics of the time, as displayed in particular in visual art: engravings, paintings, prints, photographs, and more recently fashion magazines, cinema, and other media. We see clothes (ours and others’) through the lens of art, and we consider “natural” what art presents as such. We dress according to current visual aesthetic standards, using the mirror to check whether our appearance satisfies them and adapting it to them. Young’s (2005) aim is to offer an account of the pleasure women find in clothes that emphasizes not self-objectification through valuing how one appears to the other’s gaze, but rather the enjoyment of various tactile sensations clothes can offer; she emphasizes dressing to feel rather than to be seen, “the simple pleasure of losing ourselves in clothes” (70).16 And yet, she also writes that she “cannot deny” (66–67) that women often

 Like many other feminists, Young regards this experience as most widespread in women, as the typical objects of the dominant masculine gaze. 16  She also discusses the role of clothes in bonding activities (shopping together), and the role of fashion photographs in stimulating imagination and the possibility of taking up different narratives and identities. 15

4  Varieties of Incorporation: Beyond the Blind Man’s Cane

77

dress for the gaze of others, and that fashion images stimulate and reinforce a “voyeuristic gaze.” Indeed, it is arguably our predominantly visual relation to clothes that makes these objects such apt candidates for incorporation into the seen body. Clothes (and accessories) are key to the management of one’s sense of appearance, given their intimate connection with one’s body and, at the same time, the importance of vision in our encounters with others.17 We can introduce another simple notation to represent the experience of seen-­ body incorporation: seer

(human – artifact)

More precisely, to indicate that the experience is of the self experiencing the seer’s look, we can write: human [seer

(human – artifact)]

This notation is meant to capture the lived experience of being seen with a certain item. For an experience of seen-body-incorporation to occur, I need to feel that the other is intending the system me-with-object (not just me, or not just the object). If I feel that someone is looking at my coat because, say, it is brightly colored (maybe the person has just commented on this), this does not count as an instance of seen-­body incorporation. The seer is looking at my coat as such, not at how the coat looks on me. There is a difference between feeling that others are noting one’s clothes in virtue of the clothes’ properties (color, fabric, brand, shape) and noting how one’s clothes fit (or do not) oneself. If someone tells me: “Wow, you really look good in red!”, I will have a sense of myself-in-red appearing to the other; my bodily self is involved in my experience of being seen. If, however, someone comments: “Nice trousers!”, I do not have the same experience of being seen-with-clothes, as there is no obvious reference to my body in the other’s comment. Of course, if I am concerned with how my legs look in my trousers (perhaps I am wearing short trousers because I want to show off my legs), I am likely to interpret the other’s remark as being also about my body; in this case, the experience will be one of seen-body incorporation. More generally, the experience of seen-body incorporation needs to be distinguished from the experience of the general impression one makes on others. The latter covers a very wide range of cases, well beyond seen-body incorporation.18 It is possible to make a good/bad impression through objects that are not incorporated into the seen body – such as a luxury yacht or a messy desk. In these cases, one may feel evaluated in virtue of the object, or even feel seen “with the object,” but there is no sense of one’s body being also intended by the other’s look (as a body). Relatedly,  Of course, other common devices for appearance management are make-up, hair dyes, and tattoos. I do not discuss these here as they are applied directly to or into the body, and it is easier to think of them as constitutive of the seen body (although they might have other functions, too). Here I chose to limit my discussion to physical items, like clothes and accessories (including piercings), that are more obviously external to the body, and whose experiential incorporation is thus more surprising and more in need of theoretical articulation. 18  These are cases of “impression management” and “self-presentation,” widely studied today by sociologists and social psychologists (on the tracks of Goffman’s pioneering work). 17

78

G. Colombetti

I might experience that my clothes contribute to the impression I make on the other not because of how I-with-clothes look to the other, but because my clothes are, say, expensive or dirty. The first is an experience of seen-body incorporation, the latter is not. Are there examples of objects other than clothes and accessories that can be incorporated into the seen body? I think so, and good examples are objects used in artistic performances aimed at an audience, as in the case of the veils used in the Serpentine Dance pioneered by Loïe Fuller (1862–1928).19 Here, the veils are used by the performer to create an image of movement that extends that of the body. The performer’s sense of her appearance presumably involves a sense of one’s seen body-with-veils. Musical instruments may also be incorporated into the seen body. In his interview-based study of the Danish String Quarter, Høffding (2018, 56) reports that one of the musicians (the viola player) worries whether he looks interesting while performing, and whether he should deliberately work on his body language and facial expressions to captivate the audience. Presumably, the sense of how he looks to the audience is not just about his body but about him-with-viola – namely, the ensemble “(human – instrument)” he is when performing, including his manner of holding and manipulating the instrument. Surfers, fencers, rhythmic gymnasts, cabaret artists, and clowns may all experience and even cultivate a sense of how they appear to onlookers together with their paraphernalia.20 Table 4.1: Examples of body-schema, body-image, and seen-body modalities of self-awareness, and related cases of incorporation.

Relations We have so far considered three forms of incorporation, associated with three forms of bodily self-awareness. It is now time to emphasize that, importantly, the body schema, body image, and seen body (and related incorporations) are not mutually exclusive experiences. The distinction among them is conceptual, aiming to aid the description of different ways in which we experience ourselves (including ourselves-­ with-­objects). Conceptual differentiation, however, does not imply experiential separation. The conceptual distinctions drawn here are meant to be reflective tools for making sense of experience. And concepts distinguished in reflection do not

 Many thanks to Barbara Formis for suggesting this example. Videos of this mesmerizing dance can be easily found on the internet. 20  For simplicity, I leave out altogether a discussion of whether the seen body is an explicit or prereflective modality of self-awareness. Briefly, I think it can be both (and habit plays an important role in rendering it pre-reflective). The same question can be raised for the body image, which is in fact often taken to be explicit (by contrast with the pre-reflective body schema). Yet, if perceptions, thoughts, or emotions can be pre-reflective, then arguably the body image can too (see also Gallagher (2021) for some thoughts on how the categories of the conscious and unconscious cut across the distinction between the body schema and the body image). 19

4  Varieties of Incorporation: Beyond the Blind Man’s Cane

79

Table 4.1  Summarizes the main distinctions drawn so far Modality of bodily self-awareness… Body Pre-reflective awareness of one’s schema moving and perceiving body E.g., pre-reflective awareness of one’s body as one walks up stairs (habitual action) Body Perception, thought, or emotion of/ image about one’s body E.g., thinking how to move one’s legs as one walks up stairs Seen Awareness of how one body looks to body an onlooker (real or imagined) E.g., awareness of how one looks while walking up stairs, to an onlooker (real or imagined)

… with object (incorporation case) Pre-reflective awareness of one’s moving and perceiving body-with-object E.g., pre-reflective awareness of oneself-with-­ tall-hat as one passes through a door (habitual action) Perception, thought, or emotion of/about one’s body-with-object E.g., thinking how to move as one passes through a door while wearing a tall hat Awareness of how one’s body-with-object looks to an onlooker (real or imagined) E.g., awareness of how oneself-with-tall-hat looks when passing through a door, to an onlooker (real or imagined)

necessarily refer to aspects or “parts” of experience that occur in isolation.21 In fact, in practice the body schema, body image, and seen body (and related incorporations) often coexist in experience. In this section I consider the relationship among these forms of self-awareness in some detail. First, a caveat about the body schema. One may think that a main difference between the body schema and the other two modes of self-awareness is that the former is primary, originary, or foundational because it is constitutive of self-­ awareness and thus always present (while the other two are occasional or intermittent).22 For example, as we saw in Merleau-Ponty, bodily subjectivity is captured by the notion of the body schema. Moreover, the body schema may be thought of as more desirable or positive than the other two. In Sartre, for example, unawareness of one’s bodily self, as it occurs in the experience of the body as a being-for-itself (recall the voyeur before he is caught spying), has a positive connotation: it is an unreflective, free mode of self-awareness where the self is not (yet) objectified by the other’s look. It is unclear, however, if body-schema self-awareness is more foundational, primary, or even more desirable than other forms of self-awareness. As feminists and other theorists have argued, for example, not all human beings experience themselves primarily as unreflective subject-bodies. Women, for example, are more likely to experience their bodies reflectively and as objects of the other’s gaze (usually a masculine gaze) (Young, 1980; Bartky, 1990). Also, some people attend to  I owe this way of putting it to John Dewey, who often points out in his work that he is drawing distinctions “in reflection” to analyze experience and to emphasize certain features of it, but does not mean that experience itself is neatly segregated into parts that correspond to those categories. To conclude the latter would be commit what he calls a “psychological fallacy” (1895). 22  With the possible exception of neuropathic deafferentation, where patients need to look at their body in order to move because they have lost proprioception and tactile perception below the neck. Body-schematic self-awareness is arguably missing or at least disturbed in these patients (Gallagher, 2005, 2021). 21

80

G. Colombetti

their bodies frequently or even always because they suffer from chronic pain or illness. And some people have a beneficial heightened bodily self-awareness (body image) thanks to training in yoga, tai chi, Feldenkrais, or other practices that refine proprioception (broadly understood to include kinesthesia and interoception). The same can be said for body-schema incorporation. In disability studies, for example, there is evidence suggesting that aesthetically valuing one’s prosthesis as part of one’s body image may be an important factor toward incorporating it into the body schema (Bekrater-Bodmann, 2021); there is thus a sense in which body-image incorporation is desirable and more “primary” than body-schema incorporation. Or, some professions require regularly paying particular attention to attire, so that seen-­body incorporation may be for them a dominant experiential modality, and not necessarily a negative or alienating one. Second, it is often stated or assumed that awareness of one’s body overwrites body-schematic awareness, transforming one’s body into an object. This view is implied by those accounts that regard attending to or reflecting on one’s body as obstructive (Leder, 1990). Yet, body-schematic self-awareness as a tacit sense of “I can” does not entirely vanish when one takes one’s body as an intentional object of experience. True, learning a new motor skill demands increased attention to one’s body (body image), but body-schematic self-awareness needs to be present also: new sensorimotor skills, after all, build on tacitly sedimented ones (e.g., learning to dance usually builds upon the previously acquired capacity to stand and walk). Similarly, seen-body experiences do not erase or annihilate body-schematic self-­ awareness. One’s body can become explicitly experienced and intended through the other’s look, yet it can still move and perceive in pre-reflective ways. For example, when I play the piano in front of my teacher, I feel observed and self-conscious, my body is prominent in my experience, and my performance deteriorates compared to when I play alone. If, however, I have practiced the piece well, I will still be able to play it (even if worse than when alone), retaining my skill and pre-reflective “I can” (even though a disturbed one). And even if I could not play at all when looked at, I would nevertheless retain a tacit “I can” in other domains (e.g., the tacit sense that I can get up from the piano stool and walk away). Relatedly, objects can be experienced as incorporated simultaneously into the body schema, body image, and seen body. Once the blind man’s cane is incorporated into the body schema, the blind man can attend to himself-with-cane (bodyimage incorporation) without necessarily disrupting his movements – just as, once I know how to walk up the stairs, I can attend to this action without necessarily disturbing it. This is similar for martial artists and other experts whose activities involve objects (weapons, veils, etc.). These experts may also engage body-schema and body-image awareness while also maintaining (and even capitalizing on) a sense of being seen. Indeed, for many performers awareness of being seen-with-­ objects is constitutive of the performing activity itself (think of magicians and strip-teasers).23

 For an analysis of learning the importance of the other’s look on oneself in magic, see Rappert (2022, chap. 2). 23

4  Varieties of Incorporation: Beyond the Blind Man’s Cane

81

Third, there are mutual influences among the three modes of self-awareness and incorporations, across all directions. For example, deliberately attending to one’s body and even looking at oneself in the mirror can help train new sensorimotor skills (as in the case of ballet dancers; see Legrand and Ravn (2009)). Or, as one’s sensorimotor skills develop and the body schema changes, the body image and the seen body change too. As a dancer improves, moving more fluently and with an increasingly rich and flexible repertoire of actions, he also acquires a different image of his body, and a different sense of how he looks to others. This is similarly the case in playing an instrument: as one improves and integrates the instrument into the body schema, the body image and seen body also change, coming to include the instrument. In other cases, experiences of being seen are main drivers for changes in the body image and the body schema. A woman who often feels others’ gaping at her breasts will develop a body image in which that part of her body is accentuated, which can in turn influence how she moves (hunching forward and even developing tics to hide or de-emphasize her breasts, or vice versa, perhaps) and what she feels she can do. As many feminists have argued, women are more likely to be considered primarily as bodies to be looked at, and thus to be objectified through the gaze. This constant exposure to an objectifying look influences women’s sense of what they can do (their body schema), for example, inhibiting their motor intentionality, transforming the “I can” into an “I cannot” (Young, 1980).24 Fortunately, the other’s look can also be empowering and invigorating, with positive influences on one’s movements or performance. Relatedly, incorporating objects into the seen body – such as a pair of glasses or a uniform – may change the sense of “I can,” for better or for worse (recall the study of Adomaitis and Johnson (2005) on aircrew attire mentioned in the previous section, and also see a recent study by Adam and Galinsky (2012) that found that wearing a lab coat increases performance on attention-related tasks).

Conclusion This paper has distinguished three modalities of self-awareness and three related forms of object-incorporation. In addition to the much-discussed distinction between the body schema and the body image, I have argued that we also need to consider “the seen body” as a distinctive modality of self-awareness. The term comes from Dolezal (2015), who uses it specifically to refer to what Sartre (1943) calls “the third ontological dimension” of the body: the experience of one’s own body as looked at by an other (actual or imagined). The seen body is not the same as the body image, as the latter does not usually entail a reference to the other’s look. So, although there is an important overlap between the two (both involve taking one’s body as an intentional object), they should be conceptually distinguished. Both

 Similar arguments can be found in writings on embodiment and race, most famously in Fanon (1952). 24

82

G. Colombetti

differ from the body schema as the latter is not an experience of one’s body, but rather a tacit or pre-reflective sense of oneself as bodily-in-the-world. Just as objects can be incorporated into the body schema (as already argued by Merleau-Ponty and post-phenomenologists such as Ihde), I have argued that they can also be incorporated into the body image and the seen body. The latter experiences have not received much attention, but they occur frequently and can coexist with, and influence, body-schema incorporation. Importantly, they are not merely experiences of one’s body interacting or physically conjoined with some objects; rather, they entail awareness that those objects are constitutive of one’s body – of one’s body as “intended/imaged” and/or as “seen.” Ultimately, I believe this topic is important for our understanding of self-­ awareness because it contributes to highlighting that our sense of self, including the bodily self, is plastic and can easily accommodate material things beyond the physiological body. I do not think the latter is dispensable, rather the opposite: it is through their intimate connections with the physiological body that objects can come to be experienced as constitutive of it. Although much has been written already about our “cyborg” nature, I hope the experiential distinctions offered here can add a further piece to the debate by articulating in more detail “what it is like” to be “with objects.” Of course, these are just a few possible distinctions; more may well be necessary to do justice to the complexity and plasticity of our embodiment.

References Adam, H., & Galinsky, A.  D. (2012). Enclothed cognition. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 8, 918–925. Adomaitis, A. D., & Johnson, K. K. P. (2005). Casual versus formal uniforms: Flight attendants’ self-perceptions and perceived appraisals by others. Clothing and Textiles Research Journal, 23(2), 88–101. Ataria, Y., Tanaka, S., & Gallagher, S. (Eds.). (2021). Body schema and body image: New directions. Oxford University Press. Bartky, S.  L. (1990). Femininity and domination: Studies in the phenomenology of oppression. Routledge. Bekrater-Bodmann, R. (2021). Factors associated with prosthesis embodiment and its importance for prosthetic satisfaction in lower limb amputees. Frontiers in Neurorobotics, 14, 604376. Carman, T. (1999). The body in Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. Philosophical Topics, 27, 205–226. Cash, T. F. (2004). Body image: Past, present, and future. Body Image, 1(1), 1–5. Clark, A. (2003). Natural-born cyborgs: Minds, technologies, and the future of human intelligence. Oxford University Press. Colombetti, G. (2016). Affective incorporation. In A.  J. Simmons & E.  J. Hackett (Eds.), Phenomenology for the twenty-first century (pp. 231–248). Palgrave Macmillan. De Preester, H. (2010). Postphenomenology, embodiment and technics. Review of Postphenomenology and technoscience: The Peking University lectures, by Don Ihde. Human Studies, 33(2–3), 339–345. De Preester, H. (2011). Technology and the body: The (im)possibilities of re-embodiment. Foundations of Science, 16(2/3), 119–137. De Preester, H., & Knockaert, V. (Eds.). (2005). Body image and body schema. John Benjamins.

4  Varieties of Incorporation: Beyond the Blind Man’s Cane

83

De Preester, H., & Tsakiris, M. (2009). Body-extension versus body-incorporation: Is there a need for a body-model? Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 8(3), 307–319. Dewey, J. (1895). The theory of emotion (2). The significance of emotion. Psychological Review, 2, 13–32. Dolezal, L. (2015). Phenomenology of the body and shame: Visibility, invisibility, and the ‘seen body’. In The body and shame: Phenomenology, feminism and the socially shaped body (pp. 17–52). Lexington Books. Fanon, F. (1952/2008). Black skin, white masks. (Richard Philcox, Trans.). Grove Books. Frith, H., & Gleeson, K. (2004). Clothing and embodiment: Men managing body image and appearance. Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 5(1), 40–48. Frith, H., & Gleeson, K. (2008). Dressing the body: The role of clothing in sustaining body pride and managing body distress. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 5(4), 249–264. Gallagher, S. (2005). How the body shapes the mind. Oxford University Press. Gallagher, S. (2021). Reimagining the body image. In De Preester and Knockaert, 2005, 85–98. Gallagher, S., & Zahavi, D. (2008). The phenomenological mind (2nd ed.). Routledge. Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of the self in everyday life. Doubleday Anchor Books. Halák, J. (2021). Body schema dynamics in Merleau-Ponty. In Y. Ataria, S. Tanaka, & S. Gallagher (Eds.), Body schema and body image: New directions (pp. 33–51). Oxford University Press. Hann, M. (2020). ‘It feels like an extra limb’ – Musicians on the bond with their instruments. The Guardian. (February 20). https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/feb/20/it-­feels-­like-­an-­ extra-­limb-­musicians-­on-­the-­bond-­with-­their-­instruments. Accessed 29 Nov 2021. Head, H., & Holmes, G. (1911). Sensory disturbances from cerebral lesions. Brain, 34, 102–245. Høffding, S. (2018). A phenomenology of musical absorption. Palgrave Macmillan. Hollander, A. (1993). Seeing through clothes. University of California Press. Husserl, E. (1954). The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology. (David Carr, Trans.). Northwestern University Press. Ihde, D. (1979). Technics and praxis. D. Reidel. Ihde, D. (2009). Postphenomenology and technoscience: The Peking University lectures. State University of New York Press. Ihde, D. (2015). Preface: Positioning postphenomenology. In R.  Rosenberger & P.-P.  Verbeek (Eds.), Postphenomenological investigations: Essays on human-technology relations (pp. vii– xvi). Lexington Books. Kaufmann, J.-C. (2011). Le sac: Un petit monde d’amour. J. C. Lattès. Leder, D. (1990). The absent body. University of Chicago Press. Legrand, D. (2006). The bodily self: The sensori-motor roots of pre-reflective self-consciousness. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 5(1), 89–118. Legrand, D., & Ravn, S. (2009). Perceiving subjectivity in bodily movement: The case of dancers. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 8(September), 389–408. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945\2012). Phenomenology of perception. (Donald A.  Landes, Trans.). Routledge. Papadimitriou, C. (2008). Becoming en-wheeled: The situated accomplishment of re-embodiment as a wheelchair user after spinal cord injury. Disability & Society, 23(7), 691–704. Peluchette, J. V., & Karl, K. (2007). The impact of workplace attire on employee self-perceptions. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 18(3), 345–360. Quora. (n.d.) What does wearing high heels feel like?. https://www.quora.com/What-­does-­ wearing-­high-­heels-­feel-­like. Accessed 5 Aug 2022 Ramachandran, V. S., & Blakeslee, S. (1998). Phantoms in the brain: Probing the mysteries of the human mind. HarperCollins Pub. Rappert, B. R. (2022). Performing deception: Learning, skill and the art of conjuring. Open Book Publishers. Rosenberger, R., & Verbeek, P.-P. (Eds.). (2015). Postphenomenological investigations: Essays on human-technology relations. Lexington Books. Sartre, J.-P. (1943\2003). Being and nothingness: An essay on phenomenological ontology. 2nd edn. (Sarah Richmond, Trans.). Routledge.

84

G. Colombetti

Sparkes, A. C., Brighton, J., & Inckle, K. (2018). ‘It’s a part of me’: An ethnographic exploration of becoming a disabled sporting cyborg following spinal cord injury. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 10(2), 151–166. Van Bunder, D., & Van de Vijver, G. (2005). Phenomenology and psychoanalysis on the mirror stage: Different metaphysical backgrounds on body image and body schema. In V. Knockaert & H. De Preester (Eds.), Body image and body schema (pp. 253–271). John Benjamins. Verbeek, P.-P. (2008). Cyborg intentionality: Rethinking the phenomenology of human–technology relations. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 7(3), 387–395. Woodward, S. (2007). Why women wear what they wear. Berg. Young, I.  M. (1980). Throwing like a girl: A phenomenology of feminine body comportment motility and spatiality. Human Studies, 3(1), 137–156. Young, I. M. (2005). Women recovering our clothes. In On female body experience: ‘Throwing like a girl’ and other essays (pp. 64–74). Oxford University Press. Zinchenko, V.  P. (1996). Developing activity theory: The zone of proximal development and beyond. In B. A. Nardi (Ed.), Context and consciousness: Activity theory and human-computer interaction (pp. 283–324). MIT Press.

Chapter 5

Kinesthesis and Self-Awareness Gediminas Karoblis

Introduction On July 4, 1932, after his meeting with Husserl, Dorion Cairns (1976) writes in his diary: “Husserl reversed himself on the subject of kinaesthesis…” (83). A few days later (July 8, 1932), Cairns writes again: “Husserl said he was inclined to reverse himself once more on the subject of kinaesthesis” (84). What was the problem which troubled Husserl’s mind so much that he changed his opinion on the same matter a few times over such a short period? No doubt, the concept of kinesthesis was very important for Husserl. As usual for him, he developed it in breakthrough episodes of thought at certain periods of his thinking. For example, in his Ding und Raum lectures of 1907, Husserl (1973) analyzes the constitution of an objective thing, specifically the link between the series of kinesthetic “circumstances” (Umstände) of oculomotor or corporeal movement and the series of images or appearances (Bilder) of a thing. I would prefer to call the concept presented in these lectures Husserl’s alpha-account of kinesthesis. This is the first and the most documented version of his concept. Later, kinesthesis remains important for his further analyses in static, and eventually genetic, phenomenology. It is so important for him that in Ideas III he refers to “our phenomenological-­ kinetic method” (Husserl, 1971, 1). The account of kinesthesis as presented in the Ideas may be labelled as Husserl’s beta-account of kinesthesis. It is questionable if both accounts, the one in the 1907 lectures and the one in Ideas II, are identical. This must be decided later. In the following two decades Husserl sporadically returned to his ideas on kinesthesis while working on the so-called D-manuscript group, which remains in large part unpublished. From 1931–1932, as one can gather from the published C-manuscripts (Husserl, 2006) and unpublished D-manuscripts, Husserl G. Karoblis (*) Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Geniusas (ed.), Varieties of Self-Awareness, Contributions to Phenomenology 121, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39175-0_5

85

86

G. Karoblis

once again returned to the problems of kinesthesis and treated them more persistently. At this point in time, Cairns’ Conversations with Husserl and Fink (1976), quoted above, casts some light on the thought process of the philosopher. On May 31, 1932, after a discussion with Husserl about kinesthesis, Cairns (1976) writes: “Husserl regards the present exposition as better than that in Ideen II” (80). Therefore, we have an indication of the gamma-account of kinesthesis as explained by Husserl to Cairns on May 31, 1932, just a couple of months before those sharp and fast reversals mentioned in the very beginning of this article. Consequently, the short-lived concept after the first reversal may be labelled as the delta-variant of the concept of kinesthesis. And finally, as Husserl reverses himself again, we get the last version of the concept which, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, I will label as the omicron-version of Husserl’s account of kinesthesis. The aim of this chapter is to sort out all these concepts and to understand at least some reasons for these “mutations.” It is remarkable that the phenomenological tradition always treated Husserl’s concept of kinesthesis instrumentally and as a secondary subject, and extremely rarely as an autonomous and primary topic in its own right. For example, Ulrich Claesges’ dissertation (1964), which focused on Husserl’s theory of the constitution of space (Theorie der Raumkonstitution), may be considered to be the first and, at least for a half of the century, the most substantial and original investigation of Husserl’s concept of kinesthesis. Unfortunately, this investigation is presented in quite a succinct manner and was squeezed into one third of the text (part three of the book). Claesges’ primary focus is the constitution of visual and tactile space (Parts I and II respectively). Another focus in this book is the presentation of corporeal consciousness (Part II), mostly following Husserl’s Ideas II. Thus, the concept of kinesthesis was treated as an instrumental topic, closely following Husserl’s manuscripts, and was subjected to a broader philosophical question regarding the phenomenological constitution of space in visual and tactile perception. It must be emphasized that the concept of kinesthetic consciousness occupies the conclusive part of the book: Claesges claims that kinesthetic consciousness (kinästhetisches Bewußtsein) coincides with self-awareness (Selbstbewußtsein), corporeal awareness (Leibbewußtsein), and world awareness (Weltbewußtsein). However, even in his rather scholastic treatment of kinesthesis, a hermeneutic problem occurred. It is puzzling that in his work Claesges operates with the concept of kinesthetic consciousness – an expression never used by Husserl. Yet, it was used by Husserl’s late assistant Ludwig Landgrebe (1954). How this shift in interpretation could have happened, and how it may have left further traces in the scholastic phenomenological tradition, must be addressed in another, differently attuned investigation. One may find some leading threads in the discussion between Landgrebe (1980) and Claesges (1983), and one should keep in mind that both late Husserl’s assistants Landgrebe and Eugen Fink interpreted his phenomenology in light of Hegelian philosophy (Bertolini, 2014). Another more recent example of seeing kinesthesis as an important, though secondary topic is Dominique Pradelle’s L’archéologie du monde (2000). Pradelle

5  Kinesthesis and Self-Awareness

87

offers a contrastive interpretation of Husserl’s concept of kinesthesis, especially reconsidering Merleau-Ponty’s adaptation of it in the context of French philosophy. According to Pradelle, Merleau-Ponty presents the idea of kinesthesis under the umbrella of another idea: the autonomy of the body. Again, Pradelle’s analysis is subsumed under a broader question concerning the possibility of an idealist and a transcendental phenomenological philosophy. The book also addresses Kantian transcendental aesthetics, attempting a Kantian rather than Hegelian perspective on Husserl’s philosophy. Irrespective of these different readings, Pradelle, in the same way as Claesges, develops the analysis of kinesthesis in the chapter on the archeology of spatiality. Even though Claesges and Pradelle see the relation between kinesthesis and self-awareness in nearly opposite ways, they both assume that the former deserves secondary rather than primary attention. Jean-Sébastien Hardy (2014) summarizes this in his dissertation: […] Dominique Pradelle, in his brilliant work on The Archeology of the World affirmed that regarding the carnal spontaneity, there is and must be an “operative primacy of pure consciousness over the body, linked to the subordination of kinesthesia to intentional noesis.” If so, then one could dispense almost entirely with the task of a phenomenology of kinestheses, since the main phenomenological intrigue is that of the correlation of the world and the I, in which kinesthetic activity is only a secondary and subordinate dimension. (88; my translation)

This conclusion implicitly summarizes the overall treatment of kinesthesis in the scholastic phenomenological tradition. I could give more examples of a similar kind, but I will stop here. Until now I could find only two specialized book-length pieces of research, specifically two PhD dissertations, devoted principally to Husserl’s concept of kinesthesis. One dissertation, Der bewegte Leib: Kinästhesen bei Husserl im Spannungsfeld von Intention und Erfüllung, written in German by João Inocêncio Piedade (2002), explicitly scrutinizes Husserl’s concept of kinesthesis. The author follows earlier scholastic publications in German on phenomenological topics, especially Husserl’s theory of the constitution of space by Claesges (1964), the phenomenology of passive and active syntheses by Ichirō Yamaguchi (1982), and the phenomenology of instincts by Nam-In Lee (1993). According to Piedade, the establishment of the concept of kinesthesis provides a path not only toward the analysis of the perception of a thing, but also toward the analysis of the field of tension between intention and fulfillment which is finally extrapolated in the pursuit of the ideals of the lifeworld and ethics. To the best of my knowledge, there is one more dissertation on kinesthesis quoted above and written by Jean-Sébastien Hardy (2014) in French, titled Phénoménologie des kinesthèses et ontologie du geste: Constitutions originaires du monde et de la chair chez Husserl (Phenomenology of kinestheses and ontology of gesture: Originary constitutions of world and body in Husserl). As in the former dissertation, the final aim is practical life and the construction of an ontology of gesture based on the late texts of Husserl and Heidegger. Finally, I should also mention an article titled “Husserls Begriff der Kinästhese und seine Entwicklung” published by Romanian phenomenologist Christian

88

G. Karoblis

Ferencz-Flatz (2014). This is a short but informative article which provides a glimpse into the pre-history of the concept of kinesthesis and the development of Husserl’s thought in further elaborating, or better said, in completely transforming it. Even with these exceptions in mind, one must nevertheless conclude that the most important scholastic and philosophical work on Husserl’s legacy touched the question of kinesthesis only laterally.

Husserl’s Concept of Kinesthesis in Ding und Raum The history of the concept of kinesthesis is quite dramatic. Husserl seems to occupy quite a peripheral role in this drama, and his path, though not very remote, leads quite far from the major road of the history of ideas. One may easily find that Husserl’s major inspiration for research on the constitution of space and for his own development of the concept of kinesthesis most likely came from Carl Stumpf’s book Über den psychologischen Ursprung der Raumvorstellung (1873). In the book Stumpf presents Herbart’s theory of serial forms (Reihenformen) as a correlation of the series of oculomotor positions to the series of appearances. A detailed analysis of this idea took a large portion of Husserl’s 1907 Ding und Raum lectures. Stumpf also broadly comments on Alexander Bain’s concepts of muscular feelings or feelings of movement by using Bewegungsempfindungen or Bewegungsgefühlen as the correlates in German. Husserl also sometimes used the concepts Bewegungsempfindungen and kinästhetische Empfindungen interchangeably. However, Stumpf did not use the concept of kinesthesis. How could it come to Husserl’s mind? He had Alexander Bain’s The Sense and the Intellect in his library, as well as German translations of the later books, and presumably had a good knowledge of his work. Yet Bain did not use the concept of kinesthesis or the concept of proprioception either. He rather preferred the path initiated by Charles Bell who in 1826 described the so called “sixth sense” or the “muscular sense” (Cole, 2018). The concepts of proprioception and kinesthesis were introduced by two English scholars. The latter was introduced by Henry Charlton Bastian (1837–1915) in the 1880s. In his book (Bastian, 1880) and article (Bastian, 1887), he argued against scholars who rejected the existence of “the muscular sense.” Moreover, Bastian considered that a better concept for this phenomenon is “the sense of movement,” which he labelled as kinesthesis. Unfortunately for himself, Bastian had a stubborn and militant character as a scientist. Among other controversial views, he defended a theory of the spontaneous generation of life and opposed germ theory. The former was completely discarded by the more successful leading scientists of his time (e.g. Louis Pasteur) and his own colleagues (e.g. John Hughlings Jackson). For that reason, the whole argument related to kinesthesis in Bastian’s theory was mixed with some ideas that were not in tune with contemporary consensus (Pearce, 2010). On the other hand, the concept of proprioception introduced by Nobel Prize winner Charles Scott Sherrington (1906) has been adopted widely. Sherrington divided

5  Kinesthesis and Self-Awareness

89

senses into exteroceptive, proprioceptive, and interoceptive, offering a theory which satisfied scholars of the time. Since then, Sherrington’s concept of proprioception prevails in scholarly literature written in English. In cases where the concept of kinesthesis is considered apart from proprioception, it is emphasized that both concepts are either synonymous or represent different aspects of the same sensory domain (Stillman, 2002). From a Google Scholar survey of recent literature published in 2022, one may conclude that both concepts are still very much intertwined: in 2022 there are around 1000 publications in which both concepts appear, sometimes complementing, sometimes substituting each other. Husserl never applied the concept of proprioception. Yet in the Ding und Raum lectures and in the Ideas II, he persistently used the concept of kinesthetic sensations (kinästhetische Empfindungen) which seems to be the best candidate for proprioceptive sensations in Sherrington’s sense. However, in Husserl’s writings this expression is also synonymous with others, such as “kinesthetic circumstances” (kinästhetische Umstände) or “kinesthetic sequences” (kinästhetische Verläufe or Abläufe). Finally, in later texts the phrase kinesthetic sensations completely disappears and instead only the word kinesthesis (Kinästhese) is used in the singular or plural. It is obvious that the point mentioned in the conversation with Cairns (1976) that “kinaesthesis differs from Empfindung [sensation]” (4) remains unclear if both words are constantly fused together. To enforce this problem, I will provide another excerpt from the conversations. On May 6, 1932, Cairns writes: I then asked whether the distinction noesis–hyle was a real dichotomy of the immanent constituents of Erlebnisse , or whether perhaps kinaesthesis formed a third class. He replied, first of all, that although he had tried to distinguish kinaesthesis sharply from hyle, yet there are in certain cases hyletic concomitants which necessarily accompany the kinaesthesia. I said, suppose we leave these out of account. He said, then all one can say is that the kinaesthesia is the original form of the “I do.” (72–73)

In this episode Husserl made it very clear that he aimed at the concept of kinesthesis, which is sharply different from hyle and from sensations, including the “kinesthetic” ones. In the latter quotation we also see how Husserl admits a deep fusion between kinesthesis and hyle. This note confirms how easy it was for him to be driven by the concept of kinesthetic sensations in his alpha and beta accounts. In the first account, Husserl (1973) explicitly indicated the ambiguity of the concept of kinetic sensations (Bewegungsempfindungen) (161). It is not the same to perceive the movement of a body (thing) and to perceive one’s own corporeal movement. To avoid this ambiguity Husserl introduced the concept of kinesthesis for the latter. He also separated presentational (darstellende) and kinesthetic sensations, wondering whether kinesthetic sensations form a separate class. Of course, this is far from the idea of a sharp distinction between kinesthesis and hyle that appears in the conversation on May 6, 1932 (see above). To sum up, it seems that by introducing the concept of kinesthesis in the alpha-account, Husserl substituted an ambiguous concept of movement sensations with a better one (kinesthetic sensations), but in another regard he left the meaning of sensation (Empfindung) ambiguous. Moreover, etymologically kinesthesis already entails esthesis, which adds to the confusion as to why

90

G. Karoblis

it must be predicated by sensation (Empfindung). The only reasonable explanation in this regard is Husserl’s dependence on existing tradition. Approaching a more detailed presentation of the concept of kinesthesis, I will first quote the last sentence of Claesges’ book (1964): […] the fact that kinaesthetic consciousness can without ambiguity neither be defined as mundane consciousness in the sense that Husserl gives to this term nor as transcendental consciousness in the sense of the self-contained basis for being and for knowledge of everything that exists, forces us to think “transcendentality” of Husserl’s phenomenology in a new way. (144; my translation)

According to Claesges, Husserl’s work on kinesthesis is the key for his renewal of the problem of “transcendentality.” Kinesthesis is a transcendental concept for Husserl. This is the most confusing, but also the most decisive, feature of Husserl’s concept of kinesthesis. The major direction of his thinking about kinesthesis is based on the idea that it must not be conflated with the concept of the aesthesis of movement, including the movement of the self. In other words, it must not be conflated with proprioception, currently used both in phenomenology and in cognitive science. There are two reasons for this. The first is the argument from the constitution of space, nicely described by Claesges and clearly pointed to in the quotation provided at the end of this chapter. Already in the Ding und Raum lectures, Husserl has shown how the kinesthetic series of ocular movements runs in accordance with the aspectual appearances of a thing. To put it briefly, there is no appearance without kinesthesis. The same applies to other kinds of hyletic data. Eventually, a three-dimensional object and three-dimensional space are founded on this intertwinement between kinestheses and appearances. Kinesthesis is the primordial capacity of a subject to constitute an object in space (either two or three-dimensionally) and to constitute a space for an object. Kinesthesis, therefore, cannot be the aesthesis or sensation of bodily movement in space, as this would assume that the space is already phenomenologically constituted. Kinesthesis is a prerequisite precisely for the phenomenological constitution of space and any motion in it (Claesges, 1964). From the perspective of phenomenological constitution, to conceive kinesthesis as the sensation of bodily movement in space is to fall into regressum infinitum. This brings us to the second point. One may respond to the first problem in the following way: if kinesthesis cannot be the sensation of bodily movement in space, perhaps it may be a sensation of the body in a somewhat special and different sense. Perhaps kinesthesis is the sensation of the bodily self – a priori rather than a posteriori – regarding its constitution in space. That is in fact the line of thinking Husserl pursues to a certain extent in Ideas II. In this account, kinesthetic data seem to be a special kind of quasi-hyletic data revelatory of localizations, positions, and movements of the lived body. Yet at the same time, Husserl (1989) emphasizes that “kinesthetic sensations are free processes here, and this freedom in the consciousness of their unfolding is an essential part of the constitution of spatiality” (63). This means that kinesthesis is a spontaneity which is not motivated, but motivating. For that reason, proprioception cannot be conflated with kinesthesis, since both stand in

5  Kinesthesis and Self-Awareness

91

relation to each other as two series running in accord: one is a motivated hyletic series and another one is motivating. Due to confusing certain conceptualizations in Ideas II, it is easy to miss the fact that accompanying proprioceptive data are equally consequential and hyletic as data of visual, haptic, and other sensations. According to the main line of Husserl’s thinking, the fusion of proprioception and kinesthesis leads to regressum infinitum. If kinesthesis were the same as proprioception, as a certain kind of sensation or awareness of the self – that is, if it were hyletic and consequential – it would require another antecedent, another kinesthesis and so on. Husserl never abandoned this background of his theory in any of his admittedly somewhat confusing expositions. For example, on July 11, 1931 Cairns (1976) writes in his diary: Husserl proceeded to develop his idea of kinaesthesis. The constitution of an object in perception depends not only upon a certain Verlauf of sensational-hyletic data, but also upon a certain correlation with a certain type of kinaesthesis. The latter is not primordially grasped as revelatory of motion. Motion can be grasped only when space has been constituted. Kinaesthesis differs from Empfindung by having an intimate relation to subjective potentiality. The “I can” works directly on or with kinaesthesis, and brings about sensational and hence objective changes only indirectly. The identity of an object depends on a certain relation to the “ich kann” . (3–4)

Here one may see both parts of the argument for why kinesthesis is not the aesthesis of a movement in space and why it is not aesthesis at all, and in no way overlaps with proprioception. Perhaps Husserl kept the word kinesthesis relying on his intuition (so far I could not find out if he knew about Bastian’s work), just because kinesis would have been too broad and even more misleading. Or perhaps it was because, as Claudio Majolino (2022) noted in the conference discussion of this chapter, a concept like “kinnoesis” would have been too complicated?

Husserl’s Concept of Kinesthesis in Ideas II Husserl was aware of the problem of wording. For that reason, in his beta-account of kinesthesis in Ideas II, Husserl (1989) coined the concept of “sensing” (Empfindniss) from two German words, Empfindung (sensation) and Erlebniss (lived experience), and defined it as various groups of sensory localizations in the lived body (Leib): […] all kinds of sensations, difficult to analyze and discuss, belong here as well, ones that form the material substrate for the life of desire and will, sensations of energetic tension and relaxation, sensations of inner restraint, paralysis, liberation, etc. All these groups of sensations, as sensings, have an immediate localization in Body. (160)

This sounds like Sherrington’s proprioception and interoception  – sensing one’s own body in concrete and localized manner. Yet in his reflections, Husserl’s thought remains in the uncharted territory between psychology, physiology, and philosophical phenomenology. How does all this affect the concept of kinesthesis? In Husserl’s beta-account, the former duality of kinesthetic sequences and the sequences of

92

G. Karoblis

appearances is reconceived in terms of the duality of the physical (Körper) and the lived (Leib) body. The concept of the lived body overwhelms the concept of kinesthesis in Ideas II. Husserl emphasizes and describes the famous duality of haptic sensation. When he ceases touching the paperweight, according to his example, it is no longer close to his Körper and not presented anymore; but bodily sensations, Husserl says, “still linger when the hand is withdrawn. Likewise, my finger and hand have kinesthetic sensations…” (154). “In the case of one hand touching the other,” Husserl continues, “it is again the same, only more complicated, for we have then two sensations, and each is apprehendable or experienceable in a double way.” It can be also argued that in Ideas II, Husserl (1989) contradicts his own earlier decision and again talks about kinesthetic and kinetic (Bewegungsempfindungen) sensations in a confusing way: I see how my hand moves, and without it touching anything while moving, I sense kinetic sensations, though as one with sensations of tension and sensations of touch, and I localize them in the moving hand. And the same holds for all the members of the Body. If, while moving, I do touch something, then the touch sensation immediately acquires localization in the touching surface of the hand. At bottom, it is owing only to their constant interlacing with these primarily localized sensations that the kinetic sensations receive localization. But because there is no parallelism which is exactly stratified as there is between temperature sensations and touch sensations, so the kinesthetic sensations do not spread out in a stratified way over the appearing extension, and they receive only a rather indeterminate localization. (158)

It will suffice to note that, in fact, Husserl here provides a description of proprioception by using the concept of kinetic or kinesthetic sensation. It is easy to see here the fusion of kinesthesis and hyle. This is understandable since the main aim of this paragraph is the analysis of the localization of touch in/on the lived body. A shaper distinction, though, appears in the preceding paragraph in which Husserl presents his thought experiment, a phantasy of a “barely-eyed-subject” (ein bloß augenhaftes Subjekt). As if commenting on his alpha-account of kinesthesis, which was so much focused on oculomotor flow, Husserl (1989) writes: A subject which has only eyes could not at all have an appearing lived body; in the play of kinesthetic motivations (which he could not apprehend through his lived body) this subject would have appearances of things, he would see real things. It cannot be said that this subject who only sees sees his lived body, for its specific distinctive feature as lived body would be lacking him, and even the free movement of this “lived body,” which goes hand in hand with the freedom of the kinesthetic processes, would not make it a lived body. In that case, it would only be as if the Ego, in unity with this freedom in the kinesthetic could immediately and freely move the material thing, lived body. (158)

This is a summary of Husserl’s thought experiment, which resulted in the following idea: as it is constituted visually, the lived body has a certain duality. On the one hand, it is the only way for us to be and to move in the visual world. The eyes must be embodied even if I do not see them. I may see this body next to objects of the world, such as a chair, a pen, etc. But, on the other hand, the part of my lived body which is the center from which I see everything, including myself, may not be seen. If a haptic lived body were not available for me, I would be the Ego “in unity with

5  Kinesthesis and Self-Awareness

93

this freedom in the kinesthetic” acts, but without any sensing (Erlebniss) or proprioception. We may think about IW in this regard. In 1971, at the age of nineteen, IW suffered a severe infection. His antibodies reacted to the infection in a very strange and rare way: they destroyed the nerve cells in the periphery of the body responsible for the sensory perception of touch, position, and the movement of body parts (abbreviated as proprioception). After the illness, IW could no longer feel, touch, or intrinsically follow the positions of his body parts from the neck down, although he could still feel pain and temperature. However, his motor nerves were not affected. Very slowly, IW relearned how to move. After noticing that by constantly keeping his hand in sight, he could mentally move it to the visible desired location. He began learning to move again. Through tremendous persistence and trial and error, IW re-­ engineered all habits of movement. Without the usual proprioceptive feedback that would allow him to constantly know where the hand is, IW moves by “calculating” each movement based on visual and auditory feedback (one may also add the sensory perception of temperature and pain). In 1998, the BBC made a film about IW, and one can find more recent videos on YouTube about this seventy-year-old man. In several books Jonathan Cole (1991, 2016) has described his condition in detail.

Husserl’s Trouble with the Concept of Kinesthesis in 1932 What trouble did Husserl have with kinesthesis in 1932? On March 8, 1932, Husserl (2006) writes: As an active I – awake – I am always active and therefore naturally always affected – and I am in constant “I move,” “kinetic.” The or a primal sphere in this respect is the kinesthesis (whether it is founding for all and each I-move (ego process) is a problem). To say that kinaestheses are not hyletic data and thus not data with the same function as hyletic data at all means that they do not originally affect, they (in themselves) are not pleasant or unpleasant. Only after objectification, for example, in bodily movement and in fusion with others, awakens something which can be pleasant or unpleasant. (320)

Husserl repeats the same here: kinestheses are not hyletic data. Yet the text in the parentheses (“whether it is founding for all and each I-move (ego process) is a problem”) explicates Husserl’s problem which I mentioned in the very beginning, and which made him change his mind twice in early July 1932. This is the problem of the extension of kinestheses into all and each ego process. Before addressing this question, let’s first briefly look at the gamma-account of kinesthesis, the one that Husserl commented on as the better one than in Ideas II and the one he likely had in 1931–1932. For example, a year before on July 18, 1931, Cairns (1976) writes: I forgot above to mention an all-important widening of the meaning of kinaesthesis. Husserl spoke of the free possibility of “turning to” an object in memory as involving kinaesthesia. Pursuing the strain indicated by the idea of potentiality, I asked him whether feelings connected with the beating of the heart or the processes of digestion were kinaesthesia in the

94

G. Karoblis same sense as the feelings connected with hand or eye movements, and as the kinaesthesia involved in memory. He replied that an express act of volition was by no means necessarily involved when there is a connection between kinaesthetic and sensational data. The idea of kinaesthesis expresses primarily a functional connection. Thus the essential distinction between sense data and kinaesthetic data remains unclear for me. (5)

In another text from May 1932, Husserl (2006) himself writes: “From the outset, kinaesthesis is accompanied by ‘kinaesthetic sensations’” (328). In this quotation, Husserl presents kinesthesis and “kinesthetic sensations” as accompanying one another, but apart from each other as well. This only proves the thesis that kinesthesis and proprioception (as a concept synonymous with kinesthetic sensations) should be distinguished. A couple of days later Husserl writes: “they [kinesthetic data] are directly subordinate to egoic activity (as opposed to hyletic data in the special sense).”1 This is the point in the gamma-account which made Husserl change his mind a few days later. Kinesthetic data is nothing else but “I do.” This makes kinestheses foundational for ego activity, to put it briefly. What happens to another knot: kinesthesis and the body? Of course, in his gamma-account Husserl attempts to clarify the confusion he had in Ideas II: he wants to keep apart the lived body and kinesthesis. On May 31, 1932, 2 days before the above-quoted text was written, Cairns (1976) writes: The kinaesthesia in question are directly connected, however, not with the hyletic flow which is grasped as Abschattung of the object-appearance in question, but rather with the hyletic flow which is grasped as Abschattung of the appearance of my body, more particularly, with the change (in the Abschattung of my bodily appearance) which is taken as the Abschattung of locomotion. This latter connection gives me the basis for grasping space as the continuum of loci my body can occupy, and then as the loci of other things with reference to my body. […] Husserl regards the present exposition as better than that in Ideen II, as it clearly shows the respective roles always played by kinaesthesis and by the changes in hyle at all levels of constitution. Everything that ‘goes beyond’ hyle we can attribute to noesis, to mind. (78–80)2

In this account, Husserl presents a more sophisticated theory of the constitution of visual space. Kinesthesis does not directly connect with the hyletic flow of the profiles of objects, though point-to-point correspondence remains in place. The lived body and its profiles (Abschattungen) are the mediators that constitute space as the continuum of loci actually and potentially occupied by the body in flow. Sometimes, assuming the central position of the body indicated by phenomenology, it is said that my body is the center of the world. Yet it is not adequate if one sticks to a stringent phenomenological description. In the purely visual world (for a barely-eyed-­ subject), my body is rather a very mysterious and amorphous organ in the moving and turning “corner” from which all spaces and perspectives expand. All the rest of the world is situated in regard to my body-appearance which is in motion. What is the relation between the ego and the body? To use the concepts from 4E theory, one

 My translation of unpublished manuscript D10/37a on June 2, 1932. I thank Husserl Archives for opportunity to access these manuscripts. 2  Cairns remarks are two days before Husserl’s in D10/37a. 1

5  Kinesthesis and Self-Awareness

95

perhaps may say that the ego is enactive via kinestheses, but it is embedded via the lived body. Why did Husserl change his opinion? And how should the delta-account of kinesthesis be described? There is only one reference to this short-lived version of the theory of kinesthesis and I will quote it in full: Husserl reversed himself on the subject of kinaesthesis. He would now distinguish between the process of willing and the kinaesthetic process. A voluntary recollection is a process of willing, but has no specific kinaesthetic accompaniment. On the other hand, a voluntary movement is a process of willing, which has a specific kinaesthetic accompaniment, and a specific hyletic (sensational) accompaniment. The voluntary recollection and the voluntary movement are similar in having each a volitional process as a component. But there is no kinaesthesis in recollection. ([Do] I control the phantasmic modification of the sensation-­ hyle directly, as I control the body kinaesthesis directly? Or is there a phantasmic modification of kinaesthesis, and is it this I control directly? How about the volition to attend to memory? To “go over” from attending the perceived to attending the remembered?). The character of kinaesthesis is that it is a directly controlled or rather controllable process and that it has an invariant connexion with hyletic processes so that we gain a certain mediate control over them, or the style in which they change. Husserl expressly recognized that this was different from what he had said before about hyle, kinaesthesis, and will. (Cairns, 1976, 83)

The point of departure in this delta-account of kinesthesis is the distinction between kinestheses and noeses. Husserl seems to assume in this reversal that certain noeses, such as recollection or fantasy, are not accompanied by kinestheses. It is not clear from the diary what is precisely said by Husserl and what is added in reflection by Cairns himself. Therefore, except for the very fact of the reversal, it is difficult to clarify more details of this version of the concept of kinesthesis. Moreover, Husserl changed his position in a few days. This brings us to the final omicron-version of Husserl’s concept of kinesthesis. For this one, we may pick more than one reference. Husserl is inclined to give up calling the inner time constitution “intentionality.” Intentionality is ego-activity, either original or modalized. The kinaesthetic processes are ego-activities, and every transcendent objectivity, beginning with such things as patches constituted oculomotorally are achievements of ego-activity. Genetically these no longer grasped objectivities have grown out of a stage in the development of consciousness when they were actually grasped. What Husserl calls secondary passivity is indeed a modalization of active intentionality. The kinaesthetic process is an ego-activity even when it is not a direct willing but a habit. (Cairns, 1976, 92)

In the light of what is said above, I would like to offer a comment to Dominique Pradelle’s (2000) thought summarized in the following sentence: “French phenomenology, by identifying noesis and kinesthesia, therefore seems to us to have illegitimately autonomized the constituent function of the flesh, which in Husserl remains only a simple organ of intentional consciousness” (257). The interpretation of the autonomization of the flesh in French philosophy (first by Merleau-Ponty) is truly adequate. This, as we saw, was a tendency embedded in Ideas II, Husserl’s beta-­ account, in which Husserl put the lived body at the center of his analysis with kinesthesis overlapping it to a certain extent. On the other hand, the same tendency

96

G. Karoblis

toward an “autonomized concept of kinesthesis” had arisen in Husserl’s delta-­ account of kinesthesis in which he disconnected it from noetic domains, such as remembering and fantasy. By being distinguished from noesis, kinesthesis at the same time gained autonomy from it. Finally, is Pradelle right to say that kinesthesis for Husserl remained “a simple organ of intentional consciousness”? Yes, and no. On the one hand, it is true that the ego is enactive via kinestheses, and this enactment may be extended toward the sun and the skies as reachable, given the appropriate technology of spaceships, as Pradelle contends. It is also true that discourses on the autonomy of the body extended their limits too far, thus putting a reasonable philosophy of personal deliberation and moral responsibility into great difficulty. However, Pradelle overlooks another side of Husserl’s thought, which is very close to his proposition without overlapping with it. To put it briefly, Pradelle looks at all this in a top-down direction, from noesis to kinesthesis, but Husserl in his struggle looks in the opposite direction, bottom up, from kinesthesis to noesis. As we have seen in the final quotations above, Husserl’s problem with noesis and kinesthesis was quite different. He was wondering if and how kinesthesis can be involved in noesis. And it seems that he revises his concept of intentionality by making it overlap with the ego activity and, at the same time, with kinesthetic activity. Husserl brings phenomenology to the point in which one should start conceiving and describing mental acts as kinestheses, but not as corporeal kinestheses. Finally, we should also see kinesthesis not only in a direct willing, but in a sedimented habit, including an intellectual one. As Dan Zahavi (1994) indicates, George Lakoff (1987) worked in this direction, though not in the domain of phenomenological philosophy.

Summary in Phenomenological Notation Before concluding, let me summarize the argument using the symbols of phenomenological notation (Marbach, 1993, 2010). I have already presented and used these symbols in another article of mine (Karoblis, 2018), therefore I will make this introduction of symbols brief. Marbach uses triplets of upper-case letters for noetic dispositions (for example, PER for “perception” and PRE for “presentification” [Gegewärtigung]) and lower-case letters (such as a, o, s) for noematic content. A pair of parentheses, “(…),” designates the intentional correlation between an actually occurring mental act and its object(s). A pair of square brackets, “[…],” designates the mental modification of a mental activity contained within another activity, for example, quasi-perception in an act of imagining or remembering. A pair of wedge-shaped brackets, “,” will designate that “which is latently implied in the activity in question” (Marbach, 1993, 108). Finally, a horizontal stroke or a foundation-­stroke, (“––”), will serve to designate that any representifying mental

5  Kinesthesis and Self-Awareness

97

act (Vergegenwärtigung) involves presentification (Gegenwärtigung) in terms of the embodiment of person and present surroundings. In my former article I introduced the idea of the foundational relations between parts of the body (Karoblis, 2018, 222, Fig. 12.2). I claimed that the kinesthesis of the eyes is founded on the kinesthesis of the head and the latter is founded on the kinesthesis of the body. Finally, all this is founded on the primordial present surroundings. According to this interpretation, the perception of an appearance a (PER) a was founded in implicit, presentifying oculomotor kinestheses k. Yet in this part of the analysis, I confused proprioception and kinesthesis, i.e., foundational and motivational relations. The former truly described the constitution of the body. Yet the latter takes place between kinesthesis on the noetic side and appearance on the noematic side. To designate this motivational relation, one must introduce another symbol and the best one is “→”, which is also used in logic. Of course, it must not be confused with causation or logical implication, but rather as corresponding to Husserl’s description of motivation as an “if…then” relation. Following from Husserl’s phenomenological analysis, i (the ego) is founded in kinestheses and an object is founded in actual appearances. Therefore, the motivational relation between noetic and noematic sides in the best way is presented in the following formula: i 

o →

(PER) an

(KIN) bn



 (5.1)

In the above formula, i stands for the ego pole, which is founded (“―”) on kinestheses of the body (KIN) bn. (KIN) bn stands for the n-series of kinestheses of the body which runs in parallel to the n-series of appearances. o stands for an implicitly perceived object which is founded (“―”) on the series of actually perceived appearances (PER) an. Kinestheses motivate appearances in strict relation designated as “→”. (KIN) bn may be further analyzed into parts of the body as presented elsewhere (Karoblis, 2018). Moreover, noeses are also founded in kinestheses which yields another expanded and modified formula: i 

(KIN) mn

o →

 [PER] an

(5.2)

This formula refers to the ego which, founded in the n-series of kinestheses of the mind (KIN) mn, implicitly representifies an implicitly perceived object o, which is founded in the series of quasi-perceived appearances an.

98

G. Karoblis

Conclusion Finally, in view of the topic of kinesthesis and self-awareness, I will present my conclusions. Had I kept proprioception, i.e., kinesthetic sensations or sensings, fused with kinestheses, it would have been a different story about kinesthetic self-­ awareness, etc. Now, following Husserl, I attached the kinesthetic self to the ego activity and self-awareness rather than to corporeal sensitivity and self-awareness. Of course, corporeal configurations and locomotions are enactments of the kinesthetic self. On the other hand, noeses, decisions, habits, recollections, and phantasies also are enactments of the kinesthetic self. The kinesthetic self keeps two dimensions of my life together. I think the way I move, and I move the way I think. The kinesthetic self encompasses all domains of the lifeworld in one kinesthetic style.

References Bastian, H. C. (1880). The brain as an organ of mind. Kegan Paul. Bastian, H. C. (1887). The “muscular sense”; its nature and cortical localisation. Brain: A Journal of Neurology, 10, 1–89. Bertolini, S. (2014). Das Verhältnis zwischen Husserl und Hegel bei Ludwig Landgrebe und Eugen Fink. In F. Fabbianelli & S. Luft (Eds.), Husserl und die klassische deutsche philosophie (Phaenomenologica series 212). Springer. Cairns, D. (1976). Conversations with Husserl and fink. Springer. Claesges, U. (1964). Edmund Husserls Theorie der Raumkonstitution. Martinus Nijhoff. Claesges, U. (1983). Zeit und Zeitlichkeit bei Husserl und Heidegger. Phänomenologische Forschungen, 14, 138–151. Cole, J. (1991). Pride and a daily marathon. Duckworth. Cole, J. (2016). Losing touch: A man without his body. Oxford University Press. Cole, J. (2018). Charles Bell’s ‘sixth sense’: His deductions on movement and position sense. Physiology News, 110, 32–35. Ferencz-Flatz, C. (2014). Husserls Begriff der Kinästhese und seine Entwicklung. Husserl Studies, 30, 21–45. Hardy, J.-S. (2014). Phénoménologie des kinesthèses et ontologie du geste: Constitutions originaires du monde et de la chair chez Husserl. PhD dissertation. Université Laval\Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV). Husserl, E. (1971). In M.  Biemel (Ed.), Ideen zur einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Drittes Buch: Die Phänomenologie und die Fundamente der Wissenschaften. Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, E. (1973). In C. Ulrich (Ed.), Ding und Raum: Vorlesungen 1907. Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, E. (1989). Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy, second book: Studies in the phenomenology of constitution. (R. Rojcewicz & A. Schuwer, Trans.). Springer. Husserl, E. (2006). In D.  Lohmar (Ed.), Die C-Manuskripte: Späte texte über Zeitkonstitution (1929–1934). Husserliana: Edmund Husserl – Materialien. Springer. Karoblis, G. (2018). Productive kinaesthetic imagination. In S.  Geniusas (Ed.), Stretching the limits of productive imagination: Studies in kantianism, phenomenology and hermeneutics (pp. 219–237). Rowman and Littlefield.

5  Kinesthesis and Self-Awareness

99

Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, fire, and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. The University of Chicago Press. Landgrebe, L. (1954). Prinzipien der Lehre vom Empfinden. Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung, 8(2), 195–209. Landgrebe, L. (1980). Dialektik und Genesis in der Phänomenologie. Phänomenologische Forschungen, 10, 21–88. Lee, N.-I. (1993). Edmund Husserls Phänomenologie der Instinkte. Springer. Marbach, E. (1993). Mental representation and consciousness: Towards a phenomenological theory of representation and reference. Kluwer Academic Publishers. Marbach, E. (2010). Towards a formalism for expressing structures of consciousness. In S.  Gallagher & D.  Schmicking (Eds.), Handbook of phenomenology and cognitive science (pp. 57–81). Springer. Majolino C. (2022). International conference “Varieties of Self-Awareness” (Online). The Chinese University of Hong Kong. May 2, 2022. Pearce, J. M. S. (2010). Henry Charlton Bastian (1837–1915): Neglected neurologist and scientist. European Neurology, 63, 73–78. Piedade, J. I. (2002). Der bewegte Leib: Kinästhesen bei Husserl im Spannungsfeld von Intention und Erfüllung. Passagen Verlag. Pradelle, D. (2000). L’Archéologie du monde. Springer. Sherrington, S. C. (1906). The integrative action of the nervous system. Yale University Press. Stillman, B. C. (2002). Making sense of proprioception: The meaning of proprioception, kinaesthesia and related terms. Physiotherapy, 88(11), 667–676. Stumpf, C. (1873). Über den psychologischen Ursprung der Raumvorstellung. Verlag von S. Hirzel. Yamaguchi I. (1982). Passive synthesis und Intersubjektivität bei Edmund Husserl. Springer. Zahavi, D. (1994). Husserl’s phenomenology of the body. Études Phénoménologiques, 10(19), 63–84.

Chapter 6

The Pre-reflective Dimension of Self-­Awareness and the Bipolar Structure of Existence: Merleau-Ponty’s Way from Body Schema to Sexual Schema Kwok-ying Lau

Introduction According to the phenomenological approach, self-awareness is a form of self-­ consciousness. But self-consciousness is never pure consciousness. Pure consciousness is the result of the practice of phenomenological reduction by the phenomenologically reflective subject on herself, a residue of the exclusion or suspension of all mundane components of the subject who engages herself in radical philosophical reflection. Yet both Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty have respectively already warned us that “the phenomenological reduction is never perfect” (Sartre, 1965, 2004, 73/42) and that a “complete reduction” is impossible (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, 2012, viii/Ixxvii).1 As the consciousness of a living life, self-­ consciousness is thus always intermingled with pre-reflective consciousness. Phenomenology from Heidegger onwards shows that the life of consciousness has a bipolar structure which is comprised of reflective and pre-reflective dimensions. Heidegger understands this bipolar structure of the life of consciousness according to the two dimensions of the existence of Dasein as being-in-the-world: transcendence and facticity. However, the concrete anchorage of Dasein in the world must be enacted by her living body, which is thematized by Husserl (1952, 1989) in Ideas II but not by Heidegger (1927, 1962) in Being and Time. On the basis of Husserl’s distinction between the two levels of intentionality – namely the intentionality of act at the reflective level and operative intentionality at the pre-reflective

 Hereafter references include original publication and pagination followed by the English translation. 1

K.-y. Lau (*) The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Geniusas (ed.), Varieties of Self-Awareness, Contributions to Phenomenology 121, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39175-0_6

101

102

K.-y. Lau

level – Merleau-Ponty draws our attention to the fact that operative intentionality is not only shown through normal bodily behaviors, but also through pathological ones. Both kinds of behaviors are concrete modes of being of the embodied subject which exhibit the bipolar structure of existence of the human being as a being of transcendence and affectivity. In Phenomenology of Perception, this bipolar structure of existence is firstly illustrated by the “body schema,” which describes the general structure of bodily movement and corporeal intentionality. It is further illustrated by the more specific “sexual schema” and sexual intentionality of the embodied subject. Sexual intentionality is animated by a mode of sexual self-awareness which is embodied, affective, intersubjective, and passive in nature as it is provoked by another body-subject with erotic connotation. The sexual schema and sexual intentionality illustrate concretely the metaphysical structure of human existence, namely the dialectic of autonomy and dependence, as well as existence as the non-­ bypassable movement of transcendence on the basis of facticity. This understanding of existence as a movement of transcendence on the basis of facticity is immensely significant for understanding Merleau-Ponty’s conception of self-awareness in Phenomenology of Perception. Since, for Merleau-Ponty, a concrete human subject is necessarily an embodied subject, the mode of self-­ consciousness exhibited by such a subject is never that of an absolute transparency of the reflective subject in the manner of the Cartesian ego cogito or the Kantian transcendental thinking I, which are bodiless, solipsist, and thus separated from the world. Most commentators on Merleau-Ponty’s conception of self-awareness correctly understand that his emphasis on the pre-reflective experiential basis of the perceptual subject’s self-awareness derives from the primacy of embodied consciousness as the ground for other modes of reflective consciousness (Gallagher & Zahavi, 2021; Hung, 2005; Golob, 2021; and Suarez, 2022).2 However, almost all of these scholars take the chapter on “The Cogito” in Part III of Phenomenology of Perception as their main textual reference by citing the direct declarations of Merleau-Ponty. Merleau-Ponty still makes use of phenomenological descriptions to serve as the basis of his explication of the problem of cogito. He invents the terms “tacit cogito” and “spoken cogito” to make the distinction between two levels of the subject’s self-awareness: the former is more primordial and less articulate, while the latter is more reflective but secondary in the sense of being more dependent on the former (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, 2012, xiii/422–426). But why does Merleau-Ponty make such a distinction, and does he have any phenomenological evidence in support of it? I believe he does. The distinction is first found in the chapter “The Spatiality of One’s Own Body and Motricity” (Pt. 1, Chap. 3) which introduces the

 Gallagher and Zahavi (2021) point out that for a time scholars in cognitive science and the analytic philosophy of mind widely held some kind of high-order theory to account for intransitive consciousness. This amounts to the position of intellectualism on self-consciousness. An author even proposed that the capacity for high-order awareness is the precondition of the subjective feeling of lived experience. All these are diametrically opposite to the commonly shared phenomenological position. 2

6  The Pre-reflective Dimension of Self-Awareness and the Bipolar Structure…

103

concept of the body schema based on the distinction between “concrete movement” and “abstract movement.” It is further shown in the chapter “The Body as a Sexed Being” (Pt. 1, Chap. 5) which introduces the concept of the sexual schema. These chapters form part of the core of Merleau-Ponty’s effort to present his conception of human existence as a bipolar structure of transcendence and facticity. Below we will present the essential elements of Merleau-Ponty’s concepts of the body and sexual schemas and explicate their implications for an existential conception of self-­ awareness, namely a two-level conception which corresponds to the bipolar structure of existence in terms of facticity-transcendence. Since the primary level of pre-reflective self-awareness is passive, it is also embodied, affective, and intersubjective.

 henomenology’s Existential Turn and the Question P of Intentionality It is well known that the publication of Heidegger’s Being and Time in 1927 marked the so called “existential turn” of the phenomenological movement inaugurated a quarter of a century earlier by Edmund Husserl. In contrast to Husserl’s focus on pure consciousness as the basic theme of phenomenological inquiry in Ideas I (Husserl 1950 [1913], Husserl, 1982), Heidegger has shifted, in Being and Time, the central theme of phenomenological investigation to Dasein understood as “beingin-the-world.” Whereas the basic characteristics of consciousness, for Husserl, are found in its intentional structure, Heidegger reverses the order of importance by emphasizing that intentionality is possible only on the basis of a being (Dasein) which is a being-in-the-world. Thus, instead of following the Husserlian way of defining transcendence – as the character of an object which is outside of consciousness and in the world – from the starting point of the intentionality of consciousness, Heidegger draws our attention to the fact that it is the ontological character of Dasein’s transcendence which renders possible her intentional character, i.e., her relatedness to things in the world. What Heidegger wants to emphasize is that prior to the reflective awareness of consciousness as an intentional being, this ontological character of the subject can already be seen in the pre-reflective mode of existence of Dasein: in her everyday life Dasein is always already related to various kinds of things in the world which surround her. Thus, if Husserl has rightly grasped the ontological character of consciousness as an intentional being, then intentionality is derivative of Dasein’s character as being-in-the-world. The “being-in” character of Dasein – the fact that she is always in a situation – is her defining characteristic. Yet this “being-in” does not entail just being inside a physical space like a thing in a box; it is rather an act of opening up a world, which is precisely the core meaning of transcendence. The transcendence of Dasein is therefore never separated from its situatedness in the world or from its facticity. This is the basic meaning of the

104

K.-y. Lau

existence of Dasein: in contrast to being a mere object in space, Dasein is a subject who transcends towards the world and projects a world through her very situatedness. To understand Dasein as existence means that we have to understand the specific mode of being of Dasein by asking the question: how does Dasein’s mode of being differ from that of an object? Here the question of how precedes the question of what. This is what underlies the expression “existence is prior to essence.”

From Intentionality of Act to Operative Intentionality Yet in this implicit debate between Heidegger and Husserl, the former did not have the final word. At least this is the view of Merleau-Ponty, the French outsider of the original German phenomenological movement. According to Phenomenology of Perception, Husserl distinguishes two levels of intentionality, namely, intentionality of act and operative intentionality (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, 2012, xiii/xxxii). While the former is shown in our cognitive and moral judgments as reflective acts in the realms of knowledge and morality respectively (which Kant thematizes in the Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of Practical Reason), the latter is shown through all kinds of practical and affective activities in our pre-reflective life. Operative intentionality is the stratum underlying that of the intentionality of act. When Heidegger emphasizes that the transcendence of Dasein is the ontological basis of the intentionality of consciousness, he aims at unveiling the pre-reflective ontological structure which underlies consciousness. Using the language of structuralism to present this state of affairs: underneath the intentionality of consciousness at the reflective level as the intentionality of surface structure, there is the pre-reflective level of intentionality as the intentionality of the deep-structure. This two-level structure of intentionality was not neglected by Husserl when he returns from the intentionality of act to operative intentionality in his project of genetic phenomenology. In fact, by highlighting the kinesthetic possibilities of the living-­ body in Ideas II (written between 1913–1925), Husserl (1989) has already drawn our attention to the modes of exercise of operative intentionality in the natural existence of the living-body (143–161/151–169, §§35–42). For Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger’s ontological analyses in Being and Time have a further insufficiency: the concept of Dasein as being-in-the-world is still too formal; Dasein lacks a concrete anchorage in the world. And this anchorage is possible only through the bodily nature of such a being. Though the necessity of a bodily existence for Dasein is hinted at here and there in Being and Time (e.g., the famous distinction between “Vorhandensein,” or “present at hand,” and “Zuhandensein,” or “ready to hand,” implies that Dasein has hands and thus is an embodied being), Heidegger never gives a proper ontological status to the living-body. Yet this is in fact what Husserl has already done in the Second Section of Ideas II. What

6  The Pre-reflective Dimension of Self-Awareness and the Bipolar Structure…

105

Merleau-­Ponty aims to achieve in Phenomenology of Perception is some sort of rehabilitation of Husserl the phenomenologist who places descriptive rigor prior to interpretative flamboyance. To understand more concretely what a being-in-theworld is in the field of phenomenal givenness, we have to follow Husserl’s descriptive indications of the living-body in Ideas II.

Pathological Behavior as Behavior of Pre-reflective Life But Merleau-Ponty has a greater ambition in going further than Husserl: to understand the deeper level of pre-reflective life, namely that which is shown in pathological behaviors. Merleau-Ponty wants to inquire about the dividing line between the normal and the pathological and to challenge the rationalist position which fails to give any meaning to pathological behaviors. For Merleau-Ponty, if pre-reflective life already exhibits the intentional structure of consciousness operating anonymously, intentionality can also be seen in the pathological behaviors of the body-­subject which are parts of pre-reflective life. That is to say, pathological behaviors as phenomena of pre-reflective life also carry meaning. In order to show that pathological behaviors are also meaningful, Merleau-Ponty goes back to observe pathological behaviors by practicing a novel mode of ­phenomenological reduction, which I propose to call “pathological reduction” (see Lau, 2022). However, pathological behaviors can only adopt habitual solutions to problems encountered by the patient in her actual situation. The normal subject, on the contrary, behaves differently: she can project herself into imaginary situations and propose corresponding solutions. Merleau-Ponty wants to show that pathological behaviors and normal behaviors are both concrete modes of being which exhibit the bipolar structure of existence of the human as an affective being. The human always exists both as a species being and as an individual, always lives through the relations to her own self and to others, and always finds herself under the tension of the dialectic of autonomy and dependence. In short, a human is a being who lives through the tension between transcendence and facticity, as well as the tension between activity and passivity in her bodily expressions. This is the bipolar structural mode of existence of an incarnated human subject. In the period around the publication of Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty uses the term “ambiguity” to convey the character of this bipolar structure of human existence. In his final writings, the terms “intertwinement” and “chiasm” are employed to highlight the ontological character of this bipolar existence.

106

K.-y. Lau

 irst Illustration of the Ambiguity of Existence by the Body F Schema: Distinction Between Concrete Movement as Mode of Actuality and Abstract Movement as Mode of Possibility In Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty uses his celebrated concept of the body-schema (schéma corporel) to demonstrate that operative intentionality is already exhibited in the basic motor movements conducted by the living-body in her ordinary life. The body schema is the know-how which is both a capacity and a kind of implicit knowledge possessed by the body-subject at the pre-reflective level: I have an absolute knowledge of where my pipe is, and from this I know where my hand is and where my body is, just as the primitive person in the desert is always immediately ­oriented without having to recall or calculate the distances travelled and the deviations since his departure. When the word “here” is applied to my body, […] it designates the installation of the first coordinates, the anchoring of the active body in an object, and the situation of the body confronted with its tasks. (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, 2012, 116–117/102–103)

The first English translation of the term schéma corporel as “body image” (Merleau-­ Ponty, 1962), which suggests that it is effectuated through a representational understanding, is thus unable to capture the pre-reflective character of this know-how. As know-how, the body schema is the expression of the situation of the body-subject as a subject-in-the-world motivated by the need to accomplish practical tasks in her daily existence: If my body can ultimately be a “form,” and if there can be, in front of it, privileged figures against indifferent backgrounds, this is insofar as my body is polarized by its tasks, insofar as it exists toward them, insofar as it coils up upon itself in order to reach its goal, and the “body schema” is, in the end, a manner of expressing that my body is in and toward the world [au monde]. (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, 2012, 117/103)

Through examples of clinical studies undertaken and reported by Gestalt psychologists and psychiatrists, Merleau-Ponty goes on to show that the body schema is also exhibited in the behaviors of patients with cerebral injuries. In order to explain in what way a pathological behavior differs from a normal behavior, Merleau-Ponty introduces the distinction between “concrete movement” and “abstract movement.” Concrete movement is a bodily gesture executed under vital conditions (e.g., to grasp one’s nose when suffering from a mosquito bite), whereas abstract movement is a bodily action accomplished in imaginative situations (e.g., pointing to one’s nose without the need to accomplish any task). Clinical studies find that the patient cannot perform abstract movements, for example, moving his arms or legs, or extending and flexing a finger upon command when his eyes are closed, or when he is not put into any actual situation motivated by a concrete task. He only accomplishes abstract movements if he is allowed to see the limb in question, or to execute preparatory movements involving his whole body (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, 2012, 119–120/105). When the patient can only execute efficiently concrete movements, it means the know-how of his body is reduced either to habitual actions or to those directly motivated by the practical task demanded by the actual situation. If he is unable to

6  The Pre-reflective Dimension of Self-Awareness and the Bipolar Structure…

107

perform abstract movements, this indicates that he loses his power to project a hypothetical situation; he cannot construct a virtual space as the normal subject does: The patient is conscious of bodily space as the envelope of his habitual action, but not as an objective milieu. His body is available as a means of insertion into his familiar surroundings, but not as a means of expression of a spontaneous and free spatial thought. (Merleau-­ Ponty, 1945, 2012, 121/106)

This is not the case with the normal subject. His body is not merely open to real situations and ready to take up tasks of strict necessity. In addition to this, he possesses his body as the correlate of pure stimuli stripped of all practical signification; he is open to verbal and fictional situations that he can choose for himself or that a researcher might suggest. (126/111)

The body of the normal subject can lend itself to experiments because she can situate herself in the virtual. Merleau-Ponty summarizes this in the following admirably clear and rich description: Within the busy world in which concrete movement unfolds, abstract movement hollows out a zone of reflection and of subjectivity, it super-imposes a virtual or human space over physical space. Concrete movement is thus centripetal, whereas abstract movement is centrifugal; the first takes place within being or within the actual, the second takes place within the possible or within non-being; the first adheres to a given background, the second itself sets up its own background. The normal function that makes abstract movement possible is a function of “projection” by which things that do not exist naturally can take on a semblance of existence. (1945, 2012, 129/114)

In short, the normal subject, as exemplified by her possibility to execute abstract movements, is a subject of possibility in addition to being a subject of actuality. Her consciousness of projection is a thetic consciousness in addition to that of non-­ thetic consciousness. Her mode of self-awareness is more reflective and operates above and beyond the level of lived experience. Whereas the patient, when her bodily actions are limited to concrete movements, is a subject restricted to actuality and her consciousness is a non-thetic one, which is of the pre-reflective order. Her mode of self-awareness remains limited more or less to strictly lived experience and thus operates at a more primary level. Yet even limited to concrete movements, the patient still possesses her body schema, as she still has the power to project a certain world around her, though this world is reduced to a world of actuality. In concrete movement, the patient has neither a thetic consciousness of the stimulus nor a thetic consciousness of the reaction: quite simply, he is his body and his body is the power for a certain world. (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, 2012, 124/109)

Concrete movements and abstract movements have a common basis: they are conducted by the body schema at the pre-objective level. Animated by the body schema, my body exists as a unity in multiplicity: the body schema unites the different senses of my body together as a functional unity. This also enables the body to unite the different perspectival givennesses of the object such that the object is given as a single object to the perceptual body. Thus through the body schema,

108

K.-y. Lau

my body is precisely a ready-made system of equivalences and of inter-sensory transpositions. The senses translate each other without the need for an interpreter; they understand each other without having to pass through the idea […]. With the notion of body schema, it is not only the unity of the body that is described in a new way, but also, through it, the unity of the senses and the unity of the object. (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, 2012, 271/243–244)

Merleau-Ponty’s introduction of the concept of body schema, which operates at the pre-reflective level, provides the basis for a new understanding of the unity of the different sense organs of the body and the unity of the multiple aspects of the given object. The body schema is the incarnate consciousness which confers a unitary meaning to the object given through pre-reflective experience. Thus, the core of intentionality is not only transferred from the intentionality of act to operative intentionality, as was already done by Husserl, but the very seat of intentionality is also transferred from consciousness to the living-body. In other words, the intentionality of consciousness is sustained by corporeal intentionality. Or, all consciousness is originally embodied consciousness; pure consciousness is only an abstraction from its bodily existence. But this also shows that the transcendence of the subject – her capacity of meaning conferral and the projection of a world – is enacted necessarily on the basis of her facticity, that is, of her embodied nature and situatedness. This is because the subject is necessarily projected into a concrete situation in the world through her bodily existence. This is the first aspect of the meaning of existence as ambiguity in Merleau-Ponty.

 urther Illustration of the Ambiguity of Existence by F the Sexual Schema and Sexual Intentionality With the term “existence,” Merleau-Ponty wants to demonstrate that the human subject is neither a pure intellect (against intellectualism, including the Kantian version) nor something whose actions can be explained entirely by natural causality (against the naturalistic conception of behaviorism). The human subject is a subject of affectivity and desire. A human being is not only a subject which thinks, but also one who expresses her feelings and emotions. The meanings she confers to the objects and the world around her are not limited to the cognitive aspect, but also bear an affective dimension. This is shown through Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological description of the body-subject as a sexed being in which he introduces the concepts of sexual schema and sexual intentionality to capture the affective and expressive character of what he calls “erotic perception.”3

 To my knowledge there is hitherto practically no philosophical discussion of the concept of the sexual schema aside from Helena De Preester (2013). 3

6  The Pre-reflective Dimension of Self-Awareness and the Bipolar Structure…

109

Sexual Schema While sexuality is a taboo for intellectualists, it is reduced to a conditioned-reflex action for a behaviorist. But the theory of conditioned-reflex cannot explain the pathological case studied by Merleau-Ponty: to the patient suffering from cerebral injury, obscene pictures and conversations on sexual topics, as well as tactile stimulations, cannot arouse the patient’s sexual desire. This is a case of “sexual inertia.” If, on the one hand, neurological studies show that certain parts of the brain have an inhibitive function, and if on the other hand human sexuality were just a mechanism of automatic reflex action such that the sexual object would affect some anatomically defined organ of pleasure, “then the cerebral wound should have the effect of freeing these autonomous reflexes and be expressed by an accentuated sexual behaviour” (1945, 2012, 182/158). Yet this is contrary to the clinical observation of sexual inertia in the patient concerned. For Merleau-Ponty, we have to look for another mode of explanation. To Merleau-Ponty, the pathological case of sexual inertia mentioned above shows that to the male patient, a feminine body has no erotic connotation because his perception has entirely lost its erotic structure. The patient has lost the power of projecting before himself a sexual world, of putting himself into an erotic situation, or, once the situation is under way, of sustaining it or of following it through to satisfaction. (1945, 2012, 182/159)

By contrast, when a normal person sees a naked body, in particular the erogenous zones, this apparently objective perception is inhabited by a more secret meaning which is erotic in nature, and she will be affected and her sexual desire aroused: the visible body is underpinned by a strictly individual sexual schema that accentuates erogenous zones, sketches out a sexual physiognomy, and calls for the gesture of the masculine body, which is itself integrated into this affective totality. (182/158–159)

By returning from the observation of the behavior of a pathological subject to that of a normal subject, which can be understood as practicing the pathological way of reduction, Merleau-Ponty is able to formulate the concept of the sexual schema to understand the function of sexuality in a normal person. The sexual schema is an individual subject’s particular yet consistent way of perceiving and experiencing which operates beneath the level of objective perception such that sexual meanings are conferred upon other bodies or things which she encounters in the world. But this erotic perception is not limited to pure contemplation; it liberates the sexual desire which otherwise remains inhibited or dormant in the body-subject, and thus further activates her body as a latent agent of sexual activity. Thus, the term “sexual schema” is the transposition of the concept of the body schema to the realm of sexual behavior in order to capture the sexual intentionality which inhabits erotic perception and which operates through particular erogenous zones of the body. Understood in this way, the term sexual schema serves a double function: with it not only the erotic structure of perception can be comprehensible (what makes a thing

110

K.-y. Lau

in the surrounding world bear a sexual connotation), but the sexual potentiality of the body-subject can also be accounted for.

Sexual Intentionality and Sexual Self-Awareness Sexuality is therefore not an affair of mechanical responses to external stimulus, nor is it the effect of mere biological instinct. Sexual life has an immanent character; it depends on a certain immanent function. A normal subject has a psycho-somatic constitution which guarantees the normal unfolding of this immanent function captured by the terms “Eros” or “Libido”: the normal extension of sexuality must rest upon the internal powers of the organic subject. There must be an Eros or a Libido that animates an original world, gives external stimuli a sexual value or signification, and sketches out for each subject the use to which he will put his objective body. (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, 2012, 182/158)

Yet the erotic perception which animates the sexed body as a subject of desire is not a mode of intellectual consciousness, but an incarnate consciousness whose intentionality is initiated and sustained by the body. It is therefore a corporeal intentionality, or more precisely, a sexual intentionality: Erotic perception is not a cogitatio that intends a cogitatum; through one body it aims at another body, and it is accomplished in the world, not within consciousness. For me, a scene does have a sexual signification […] when it exists for my body, for this always ready power of tying together the given stimuli into an erotic situation and for adapting a sexual behaviour to it. There is an erotic “comprehension” that is not of the order of the understanding, given that the understanding comprehends by seeing an experience under an idea, whereas desire comprehends blindly by linking one body to another. (183/159)

Merleau-Ponty describes the phenomenon of sexual inertia through pathological cases in human sexual life in order to comprehend the erotic structure of perception, or the structure of sexual perception. From this, the following question arises: has the patient suffering from sexual inertia completely lost her sexual self-awareness such that she is entirely indifferent in front of a potential erotic object, or even a body of evident erotic underpinnings such as the naked body of the opposite sex (for a heterosexual) or that of the same sex (for a homosexual), or any naked body (for a bi-sexual)? And does it mean that the essential cause of her indifference before a potential erotic object or a human body of erotic character is her loss of the power of representation in general such that she can no more perceive the erotic properties of the object or the erotic character of the human body performing seducing gestures? First of all, in the section devoted to “The Body as a Sexed Being” in Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty never uses such a term as “conscience de soi sexuelle” or “auto-représentation sexuelle,” French terms equivalent to “sexual self-awareness” in English. If he does not use these terms to describe the phenomenon of erotic perception, this is to remind us that we should not use the

6  The Pre-reflective Dimension of Self-Awareness and the Bipolar Structure…

111

terms of philosophical intellectualism to describe such specific kinds of perception. Even to use the very general term of “perception” to describe phenomena related to our life of desire in general, and erotic life in particular, may be misleading if such a term is used without care. This is because the philosophical intellectualism of the Cartesian and even Kantian traditions understands perception as a sub-species of representation. However, the Cartesian-Kantian mode of representation functions without the necessary participation of the body. Thus for Descartes and Kant, perception is reduced to representation as an act of pure consciousness operating at the reflective level. Merleau-Ponty draws our attention to the fact that the patient who suffers from sexual inertia has a deficiency in erotic perception. Yet erotic perception is “not a Cogitatio that intends a cogitatum; through one body it aims at another body” (1945, 2012, 183/159). Erotic perception is that specific kind of perception which animates our sexual life. It is sustained by a sexual intentionality – it aims at another body. It is a kind of bodily intentionality which is not animated by the reflective self-awareness of a cogito – the pure thinking I in the Cartesian or Kantian mode. Sexual intentionality is rather animated by the affection generated by the visual and tactile contacts with another body. When I fall in love with another person, I discover that I am attracted to this other person. The desire for this person arises without the possibility for me to resist this attraction. In the moment, I certainly have the awareness of being attracted to this other person, but this self-­ awareness is not the result of pure reflection in a cognitive mode. This self-awareness, which is erotic in nature, is secondary, as it is subsequent to the state of erotic affection into which I have been engaged. I haven’t asked the question “should I love this person” before I find myself in love with her. Rather, I ask such a question only after I find myself in love with that person. The state of sexual affection is at the origin of the generation of the sexual self-awareness of the body-subject. The carnal nature and affective character of sexual self-awareness is mutually defining, as affectivity is one of the defining characters of the body-subject. Yet only a body-subject can be affected, not the body as object. Thus sexual self-awareness is both an incarnate consciousness and an affective consciousness. There is a third essential characteristic of sexual self-awareness in Merleau-­ Ponty’s phenomenology in contrast to the self-awareness of the intellectualist mode. The Cartesian mode of self-awareness is solipsist. There is neither another thinking subject nor the world for the Cartesian cogito. If there is no other body-subject, how can there be any sexual life for the Cartesian ego cogito? Is this a hint to understand why Descartes remained single all his life? This is the same case for Kant, the philosopher of pure Reason, who remained a bachelor when he died at 80 years old. Of course, Kant has left us a lot of important writings on moral and political theory. Yet there is no ontological basis for ethics and political philosophy if there is not the world composed of other body-subjects. To Merleau-Ponty, it is evident that erotic perception takes place in the world, as it arises from the affectivity of another body-subject. Thus sexual self-awareness is intersubjective in nature and never solipsist. In comparison to Husserl’s cherished project of transcendental phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of human sexuality is simply too mundane. It can never match the haughtiness of

112

K.-y. Lau

Husserl’s vision of the ultimate self-responsibility of the transcendental phenomenological philosopher in view of the transformation of humankind into a community of philosophers as the higher level of human existence (Husserl, 1954, 1970, 333/286). Yet can human sexuality fall under Husserl’s transcendental reduction such that it can be thematized within the framework of transcendental phenomenology? We are very doubtful about it. In any case, for Merleau-Ponty the phenomenon of sexual life is an important constitutive dimension of human existence which is irreducible to the pure thinking subject in the transcendental attitude. The subject of sexual activity remains always in the mundane attitude. Yet without sexual life there is simply no human life, and no community of philosophers as a higher order of human existence is possible without it.

Sexuality as Existence For Merleau-Ponty, there is a certain “blindness” inherent in erotic perception and sexual intentionality. This blindness means that erotic perception and sexual intentionality do not have the clarity and distinctness of an idea obtained by reflection and intellectual analysis. Sexual intentionality is rather a relation to others which operates at the pre-reflective level. This shows that affective life, our life of emotions and desires, operates beneath our intellectual life but above purely biological life: it is at the junction or intertwinement of the two. This manner of living in-­ between intellectual life and biological life is the life of affectivity and desire which characterizes our sexual life and what Merleau-Ponty means by existence. To him sexual intentionality precisely “follows the general movement of existence” (1945, 2012, 183/159). In conjunction with the meaning of existence as a level of activity which is in-­ between the levels of pure intellectual life and pure biological life, there is another aspect of the meaning of existence shown by sexuality, namely that of human relation. Firstly, sexuality shows that the human being is at the same time a being for one-self (the search for satisfaction of one’s own desire) and a being for and with others (sexual behavior accomplishes itself necessarily with reference to and in the company of others). In other words, sexuality shows that human existence is at the same time existence as a species (as co-existence in anonymity) and existence as an individual. For Merleau-Ponty, in contrast to Heidegger, human existence is constructed upon a more or less passive life in the form of anonymous co-existence with others: “[L]iving” (leben) [is] a primordial operation from which it becomes possible to “live” (erleben) such and such a world, and that we have to eat and breathe prior to perceiving and reaching a relational life, to be directed toward colors and lights through vision, toward sounds through hearing, and toward the other person’s body through sexuality, prior to reaching the life of human relations. Thus vision, hearing, sexuality, and the body are not merely points of passage, instruments, or manifestations of personal existence. Personal

6  The Pre-reflective Dimension of Self-Awareness and the Bipolar Structure…

113

existence takes them up and gathers in them their given and anonymous existence. (186/162; translation modified)

Merleau-Ponty illustrates this level of anonymous co-existence by the pathological case of a young girl suffering from temporary aphonia (the loss of speech) because of being forbidden by her family to continue a loving relation: If the emotion chooses to express itself by aphonia, this is because speech is, among all bodily functions, the most tightly linked to communal existence, or, as we will say, to coexistence. Aphonia, then represents a refusal of coexistence. (187/163)

But the phenomenon of love also shows that the human being is a being for one-self in which her personal existence as individuality is affirmed. The relations to one-­ self and to others simply express one of the basic dimensions of human existence: Thus, we discover through the sexual signification of the symptoms, sketched out subtly, what they signify more generally in relation to past and future, self and others, that is, in relation to the fundamental dimensions of existence. (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, 2012, 188/164)

The third aspect of the meaning of existence is the expressive character of human existence through the body. The human subject is a being of bodily expression. Not only does she use signs and symbols to express the meanings she confers on the objects and the world in which she is situated, she also uses her body to express herself. Her bodily gestures and facial expressions are the signs she naturally disposes to express herself. Yet these signs are not external to the significations they serve to convey, but are inhabited by their significations. Thus the body as an expressive sign or symbol is not a neutral third term between the expression and the signification, in the sense that a third term is a pure instrument which can be replaced by other instruments. The expressive body is inhabited by the meaning conveyed by her gestures: But if the body constantly expresses the modalities of existence, we will see that this is not in the same manner as the stripes signify an officer’s rank or as a number designates a house. The sign here does not only indicate its signification, but also inhabited by it. (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, 2012, 188/164)

In other words, the human body is rather the embodiment of the signification which cannot be read outside the expression of the body: The body expresses total existence in this way, not that it is an external accompaniment of it, but because existence accomplishes itself in the body. This embodied sense is the central phenomenon of which body and mind, or sign and signification are abstract moments. (193/169)

This is a non-reductionist conception of existence which expresses the inherent circularity and tension within the bipolar structure of human existence: Understood in this way, the relation between the expression and that which is expressed, or between the sign and the signification, is not a one-way relation […]. The same reason that prevents us from “reducing” existence to the body or to sexuality also prevents us from ‘reducing’ sexuality to existence: it is because existence is not an order of facts (like “psychical facts”) that one could reduce to other facts or to which these others could be reduced;

114

K.-y. Lau rather, it is the equivocal milieu of their communication, the point where their boundaries merge, or again, their common fabric. (193/169)

The bipolar structure of human existence renders impossible any theory which favors only one of the terms of this structure, whether intellectualist or empiricist, idealist or materialist. A traditional dualistic metaphysics is also impossible, such as the Cartesian metaphysical dualism in which the mind and the body are two mutually independent substances without junction or intertwinement. The bipolar structure of human existence as exemplified by the body shows precisely the ambiguity of human existence.

 exuality and the Metaphysical Structure of Human S Existence: The Dialectic of Autonomy and Dependence For Merleau-Ponty, human sexuality not only shows the bipolar structure of human existence in a general sense, it also exhibits this structure in a more specific sense, namely in terms of the dialectic of autonomy and dependence, or the famous “master-­slave dialectic” conceptualized first by Hegel in Phenomenology of Spirit. As we have pointed out earlier, the bodily nature of the human subject shows that she has an aspect of anonymous co-existence. Yet as a subject of desire and affectivity her actions cannot be understood as governed mechanically by natural laws nor simply as the effect of a “bundle of instincts.” The phenomena of modesty, desire, shame, and love show that the human being is also an individual who is an incarnate consciousness and who enjoys freedom. But her freedom is never total; the exercise of her freedom must pass through relations with others such that her freedom is always undermined. The phenomenon of sexual love manifests this freedom under tension in a significant way: Man does not ordinarily show his body, and, when he does, it is either nervously or with the intention to fascinate. It seems to him that the alien gaze that glances over his body steals it from him or, on the contrary, that the exhibition of his body will disarm and deliver the other person over to him, and in this case the other person will be reduced to slavery. Thus modesty and immodesty take place in a dialectic of self and other that is the dialectic of master and slave. (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, 2012, 194/169–170)

The term “dialectic” in this conceptualization of the relation between master and slave refers to the interchangeable position of being the object of fascination and being the subject of freedom acquired in turn by the incarnate subject. There is never a stable and static equilibrium between the two sexual partners in which any one side occupies an absolutely privileged position. They always co-exist in tension: But this mastery is a dead end, since, at the moment my value is recognized by the other’s desire, the other person is no longer the person by whom I wanted to be recognized: he is now a fascinated being, without freedom, and who as such no longer counts for me. (194–195/170)

6  The Pre-reflective Dimension of Self-Awareness and the Bipolar Structure…

115

Yet this dialectic of master and slave, contrary to the original Hegelian version, does not operate through two mere consciousnesses, but through two bodily existences who play the roles of both object and subject at the same time. This dialectic of the inter-personal relationship exhibits a specific metaphysical signification: To say that I have a body is thus a way of saying that I can be seen as an object and that I seek to be seen as a subject, that another person can be my master or my slave, such that modesty and immodesty express the dialect of the plurality of consciousnesses and that they in fact have a metaphysical signification. (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, 2012, 195/170)

Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of the metaphysical signification or structure of the human body is not something derived from a first principle which is of the purely rational or intelligible order, but one which belongs to the order of “grand factum” or facticity. It is a kind of “not-otherwise,” which is neither hypothetical nor comprehensible from natural causality: The importance attached to the body and the paradoxes of love are linked, then, to a more general drama drawn from the metaphysical structure of my body, at once an object for others and subject for me. (1945, 2012, 195/170)

The dialectic of autonomy and dependence is a dialectic in a non-logical sense (neither in terms of the relation between logical categories nor between pure consciousnesses); it is dialectical in terms of the existential tension between the self and the other in matters concerning freedom. This self-other relation is enacted by a negative or negating moment: To treat sexuality as a dialectic is not to reduce it to a knowledge process nor to reduce the history of a man to the history of his consciousness […] it is the tension from one existence to another existence that negates it and without which it can nevertheless not be sustained. Metaphysics – the emergence of a beyond-nature – is not localized on the level of knowledge: it begins with the opening to an “other.” (195/171)

The metaphysical signification of sexuality is that human existence does not belong to the order of natural causality, but is animated by the desire for freedom which incorporates a moment of negativity or negation. Yet this freedom is never total; human freedom is always compromised.

 exuality as Ambiguous Atmosphere: Existence S as the Non-­bypassable Movement of Transcendence on the Basis of Facticity If sexuality exhibits the metaphysical structure that human existence is a desire for freedom which, however, is always compromised, this shows that sexuality places the human subject in an affective and emotional milieu which no one can bypass. Merleau-Ponty calls this affective milieu “an atmosphere”:

116

K.-y. Lau Sexuality is neither transcended in human life nor represented at its core through unconscious representations. It is continuously present in human life as an atmosphere. (1945, 2012, 196/171)

In the atmosphere of sexuality, what emerges eminently are not ideas or representations of the body, but rather “an odor or a sound from the bodily region that it occupies most specifically” (196/172). Sexuality is the intimate bodily encounter with the other which involves multiple dimensions. Yet we can never have a global, bird’s eye view representation of the sexual scene that we live through. We can only retain some privileged images of it which form a certain affective physiognomy (196/172). Sexuality as an atmosphere is therefore always ambiguous. It is the unbypassable dimension of human existence. As expression of our desire for freedom, sexuality is a movement of transcendence. Yet it is not a pure transcendence which leaves behind facticity once and for all, but a transcendence with a localized attachment through the integration of the order of facticity. Sexuality can motivate privileged forms of my experience without being the object of an explicit act of consciousness. Thus understood as an ambiguous atmosphere, sexuality is coextensive with life. In other words, ambiguity is essential to human existence, and everything that we live or think always has several senses. (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, 2012, 197/172)

To say that sexuality is coextensive with life means that there is an osmosis between sexuality and existence. On the one hand, life has multiple dimensions of which sexuality is but one. On the other hand, sexuality does not exert a direct determination on the whole of existence. Sexuality may facilitate some aspects of human life, yet it may also be a hindrance to some other aspects. Merleau-Ponty therefore does not preach any sexual determinism with respect to existence. Yet it remains true that sexuality is the expression of one important dimension of existence, namely the movement of transcendence which is the capacity to take up and transform what is factually given by giving it a new sense. But transcendence is never complete and facticity is never entirely conquered; the tension between the two remains forever. “Transcendence” is the name we shall give to this movement by which existence takes up for itself and transforms a de facto situation. Existence, precisely because it is transcendence, never definitely leaves anything behind, for then the tension that defines it would disappear. It never abandons itself. What it is never remains external and accidental to it, since it takes it up in itself. (1945, 2012, 197/173)

Existence is the persistent tension between transcendence and facticity: this is the ambiguity inherent in human existence.

Conclusion As we have shown, sexuality shows the bipolar structure of human existence as a subject of affectivity and desire. This affective and desiring subject is in possession of the body schema in general and the sexual schema in particular. But the sexual schema is not the result of the active acquisition of the sexual self-awareness of the

6  The Pre-reflective Dimension of Self-Awareness and the Bipolar Structure…

117

subject. It results rather from the pre-reflective sedimentation of the body-subject in her affective and intersubjective sexual life. With sexual intentionality and sexual self-awareness, sexuality manifests the pre-reflective dimension of a self-­ consciousness of the embodied subject which is affective and intersubjective. It is at the opposite end of the intellectualist mode of self-awareness. Sexuality also shows other dimensions of human existence which manifest her condition as both a species being and an individual, as well as her relation to herself and to others. Sexuality also shows that the human body is a means of expression of her affective and emotional life, that she lives under the tension of the dialectic of autonomy and dependence, and that she is engaged in the non-bypassable movement of transcendence by assuming her facticity. Yet under this bipolar structure, the living-body exhibits a stylistic unity. Though she has an underlying natural stratum of anonymous existence, she also has a personal history and a uniqueness. That is why she is not merely a species being, but also an individual. Faced with her environment, she does not merely react mechanically, but interacts dynamically with the persons and the things she encounters within the world. She benefits from the body schema to interact with the surrounding world by injecting new significations into the stimuli she receives from the world with all sorts of bodily and linguistic expressions. Thus human existence is a stylistic existence of expressivity. The coexistence of the various diametrically opposite terms to describe human existence shows its ambiguity. “This ambiguity is not an imperfection of consciousness or of existence, it is their very definition” (Merleau-Ponty, 1945, 2012, 383/347). The ambiguity of existence is further shown in the human body which is neither a pure intellect nor a machine, but rather “comparable to an art-work” (177/153): this is the stunning conclusion of Merleau-Ponty. This aesthetic dimension of existence which elaborates upon the thematization of body schema and sexual schema is precisely what is absent in Heidegger’s version of existential phenomenology in Being and Time. What remains untreated is the temporal dimension underlying existence. But this is a vast topic which must be reserved for another work.

References De Preester, H. (2013). Merleau-Ponty’s sexual schema and the sexual component of body integrity identity disorder. Medicine, Health Care, and Philosophy, 16(2), 171–184. Gallagher, S., & Zahavi, D. (2021). Phenomenological approaches to self-consciousness. In E.  N. Zalta (Eds.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring Edition). https://plato. stanford.edu/archives/spr2021/entries/self-­consciousness-­phenomenological/ Golob, S. (2021). Self-awareness and the ‘I’ in the phenomenological tradition. In P. Kitcherm (Ed.), The self (pp. 27–286). Oxford University Press. Heidegger, M. (1927). Sein und Zeit. Max Niemeyer. Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time. (John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson, Trans.). SCM Press. Hung, W.-S. (2005). Perception and self-awareness in Merleau-Ponty: The problem of the tacit cogito in the Phenomenology of Perception. The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, 5, 211–224.

118

K.-y. Lau

Husserl, E. (1950). In W.  Biemel (Ed.), Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie, Husserliana III. Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, E. (1952). In M. Biemel (Ed.), Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution, Husserliana IV. Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, E. (1954). In W. Biemel (Ed.), Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie: Husserliana VI. Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, E. (1970). The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology. (David Carr, Trans.). Northwestern University Press. Husserl, E. (1982). Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy, first book: General introduction to a pure phenomenology. (F. Kersten, Trans.). M. Nijhoff. Husserl, E. (1989). Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy, second book: Studies in the phenomenology of constitution. (R. Rojcewicz & A. Schuwer, Trans.). Kluwer Academic Publishers. Lau, K.-y. (2022). Pathological reduction and hermeneutics of the normal and the pathological: The convergence between Merleau-Ponty and Canguilhem. In A. Bortolan & E. Magri (Eds.), Empathy, intersubjectivity, and the social world: The continued relevance of phenomenology. Essays in honour of Dermot Moran (pp. 137–162). De Gruyter. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945). Phénoménologie de la perception. Gallimard. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of perception. (Colin Smith, Trans.). Routledge & Kegan Paul. Merleau-Ponty, M. (2012). Phenomenology of perception. (Donald A. Landes, Trans.). Routledge. Sartre, Jean-Paul. (1936) 1965. Transcendance de l’ego. : Vrin. Sartre, J.-P. (2004). The transcendence of the ego. (A. Brown, Trans.). Routledge. Suarez, D. (2022). Perception and self-awareness in Merleau-Ponty and Martin. European Journal of Philosophy, 30, 1028–1040.

Part III

Historical, Social, and Environmental Self-Awareness

Chapter 7

Historical Self-Awareness David Carr

The concept of self-awareness has a central place and a long history in modern Western philosophy. It may have had an equally important role in other traditions as well, but here I speak only of what I know best: Western philosophy of the modern period. There, it is intimately tied to ideas of consciousness, reflection, experience and, of course, selfhood. Some might think the term self-awareness redundant. Is not all awareness self-­ awareness? Not that the self is the only object of awareness. But even if we insist, as do the phenomenologists, that all awareness is directed outward, to the other – things, persons, states of affairs, the world – does not such centrifugal consciousness include, even require, self-awareness? How can I be aware of something without at the same time being aware of my awareness? As Hegel said, consciousness distinguishes itself from something to which it also relates itself (1952, 70). On this account, awareness seems inextricably tied to itself. But these considerations invite well-known difficulties. For one thing, awareness seems headed into an annoying infinite regress, a hall of mirrors from which it can never escape. For another, it seems to deny an experience with which we are all familiar: the kind of absorption or immersion in the object which attends some of our most intense experiences, and which amounts almost to self-forgetfulness or oblivion. Yet there is still a difference between such a “loss-of-self” and the loss of consciousness altogether, which happens every time we fall asleep. These considerations have led certain early twentieth century thinkers to invent, or discover, a pre-reflective self-consciousness, a conscience (de) soi (as Sartre (1966, 19) called it), or Jemeinigkeit (Heidegger, 1957, 42), more recently styled the “minimal self”

D. Carr (*) Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Geniusas (ed.), Varieties of Self-Awareness, Contributions to Phenomenology 121, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39175-0_7

121

122

D. Carr

(Zahavi, 2005). This conclusion is a good one, I think, not only because it solves a conceptual problem, but because it actually corresponds to our experience. But this leaves standing the more robust form of self-awareness, not pre-­reflective but reflective, in which I truly become an object for myself. I am, after all, among the objects, persons, and states of affairs that make up my world, and it is not unusual that I occasionally turn my attention to myself. Here I take a certain distance from myself. What forms does this self-attention assume, what conceptual background goes into it, and what is the practical context in which it takes place? These are among the questions that arise when we think about self-awareness. So far I am only reminding you of familiar problems surrounding the concept of self-awareness in order to prepare the ground for an investigation of what I call historical self-awareness, a special case of self-awareness that I think has not attracted the attention it deserves. While this topic significantly broadens the notion of self-awareness and moves it into new territory, we will find, I think, that this kind of self-awareness will be attended by some of the same problems that bedevil the concept in its original form. If we now focus our attention on reflective self-awareness, we can ask: what is it that I’m aware of? Well, myself, or my self. The object of my self-awareness is not a thing or an idea, or a state of affairs, but a self. For the modern epistemological tradition, the most important thing about this self-awareness was its certainty or incorrigibility. I cannot doubt my existence or even the content of my thoughts. But the certain knowledge that I exist and that I’m thinking, and even of what I’m thinking, does not seem very interesting as far as it goes. Its importance for modern philosophers like Descartes is that they thought it could be used as a basis for inferring knowledge about the world. But these inferences have been less than convincing. And this whole discussion tells us very little about this self of which I am aware. What is the self? Descartes (1993, 20) famously described the self as a thinking thing, but then helpfully included under “thinking” also doubting, willing, imagining, and sensing. These are activities, and one thing that Descartes seemed not to notice, is that they take time. They unfold in temporal sequence, in the actions, projects, and accomplishments of a self. But this unfolding is more than a mere sequence. The self I am aware of in self-awareness certainly exists in time or through time, and it is always located at a certain place in time, a now. But human experience is not merely a succession of such now-points. Rather, the now can be seen as a vantage point from which we survey the past and the future. As Husserl showed (1966), each moment is surrounded by its temporal horizons and is possible as a phase in human time by being the point where the future is transformed into the past. This is of course not a metaphysical statement about the nature of time but a description of the experience of time. For Heidegger (1957, 373) too, the human self is a kind of stretch that encompasses past and future in its grasp. For Husserl, temporality exhibits the logic of wholes and parts rather than the accumulation individual points.

7  Historical Self-Awareness

123

Narrative For this reason, narrative structure has suggested itself to many as a key to understanding the self. To tell a story is to find a certain structure in a sequence of events, experiences, and actions, usually those of persons. A narrator relates events in the life of a central subject or protagonist which unfold from a beginning through a middle to an end. A plot emerges which makes sense of this unfolding of events. The story is addressed to a certain audience, usually told from a retrospective point of view. Wilhelm Dilthey characterized human experience as a search for a “coherence of life” (Zusammenhang des Lebens) (1970, 249) running through the vicissitudes of the temporal flow of events. He likens this search to the art of autobiography in which an individual looks back and tries to find coherence in the events of her life. But for Dilthey, it is clear that autobiography is only the literary expression of the kind of reflection on life as a whole that we all engage in from time to time, whether we ever write it down or not. The self emerges as the hero or protagonist of a story whose author is able to order the diverse elements of life into a coherent whole. Heidegger invokes similar notions when he describes inauthenticity as a kind of fragmentation (Zerstreutsein) (1957, 129) which has to be restored to wholeness (Ganzsein) by resolutely facing up to death. Selfhood is then a kind of coherence which makes sense of the diverse elements of one’s life. This is the idea of selfhood as narrative identity that has been taken up by various authors such as Ricoeur (1984), MacIntyre (1981), Wilhelm Schapp (1976), and others. Living your life in a reflective way is like telling and acting out a story of which you are the protagonist. Self-awareness takes the form of storytelling about oneself. But the liver of life has certain disadvantages compared with the teller of a tale. If he avails himself of a retrospective point of view, he does so within an ever-­ changing present. Each moment offers a new perspective on the past as it faces a future of unexpected new points of view. So this hero may seem a tragic hero, a Sisyphean figure always scrambling to restore order to a disorderly course of events that spirals repeatedly out of control as things have a tendency not to fit the story-­ line. This is one reason why many critics have thought that the idea of narrative, at home in the realm of fiction, is ill-suited to an understanding of selfhood in the real world. But often the radical change, including a transformation of the past, is the story itself, as in so many conversion narratives. See Augustine’s Confessions, (1949) which Dilthey was fond of citing as an example of autobiography. The innocent pursuit of life’s pleasures is now recast as a life of sin. In political conversion tales, a life of service to world revolution and the salvation of mankind is now treated as youthful enthusiasm, idealism, and gullibility. In psychoanalysis: early family life is radically recast as an Oedipal drama full of trauma, sex, and violence. In a sense, the identity of the protagonist has changed because the story has changed: the sinner becomes a saint, the communist a crusader for freedom, the neurotic a healthy individual capable of love and work. The transformed past, of course, does

124

D. Carr

not disappear from the convert’s life, but is worn as a badge of pride. My past evil and ignorance make my present virtue or enlightenment shine all the more brightly. The problems connected with narrative as a model for selfhood do not stem from the contrast between fiction and fact. To understand oneself as the central figure in a story is not to identify with some fictional character participating in a plot that unfolds like a fictional story. When comparing personal life with narrative, what counts is the differences of temporal perspective. Not all narratives are fictional, as the case of autobiography shows. There are true stories, after all. What fictional and non-fictional narratives have in common is that they recount events that have already happened. Retrospection offers a certain kind of clarity in a course of events and actions. We know how things turned out, the unintended consequences of actions are now manifest to us, hindsight confers a certain wisdom on our understanding of ourselves. If, late in life, we can secure a certain personal identity for ourselves that emerges only in retrospect, we can clear away some of the false starts and detours that might have made us into a different person. The point here is that there are specifically temporal limits to self-understanding, which turn out to be a version of the hermeneutical circle. The whole is discernable, if at all, from the perspective of one of its parts, that is, from a point in time. Yet the part is understandable, if at all, as belonging to the whole. “Understanding always hovers between these two points of view,” Dilthey writes (1970, 288). And because the present is always changing, “our view of the meaning of life is always changing.” We can see that the narrative view of the self is useful up to a point, but it has its limits. The idea of life as a constant struggle to craft a narrative identity, while repeatedly having to revise and update it, makes sense only if we accept the premise of the view that living life is like telling a story, or more properly, like living and acting out a story. But there are three things that the narrative conception gets right. (1) The self must be seen against the background of temporality. If personality is to some degree a matter of constancy, to be somebody in a more or less consistent way, it is time that always threatens this constancy. Or to put it in another way, temporality is the theatre of operations in which the issue of self-awareness plays out. (2) Selfhood is always to some degree an accomplishment, something that always has to be achieved. It is not a given, it can never be taken for granted. (3) The third thing that emerges from this discussion is that it involves a concept of meaning that is tied up to the logic of wholes and parts. As we can see in the terms we have appropriated from Dilthey and Heidegger, wholeness and coherence are always at issue here. Wholes and parts are interdependent, and meaning lies in the relation among them. Alasdair MacIntyre (201) among others objects to the idea of self-authorship as an idol of modern individualism and self-centeredness. We are at most the co-­ authors of our own stories, he says, and the stories we take over and act out are in large measure written by others. Our lives and personal identities can be seen as consisting of interlocking narratives with multiple origins which we take up rather than invent. Even Heidegger backs away from his idea of authenticity in his chapter on historicity, where he suggests that we look to the past for heroes to emulate. What is peeking through in this discussion of pre-existing narratives, thanks in part to MacIntyre, is what is most lacking in discussions of selfhood based on

7  Historical Self-Awareness

125

narrative. That is the social dimension. In the classic existentialist view, selfhood seems purely a matter of self-relatedness, and social relations assume at most a negative role which detracts from my personal integrity. Social roles are at the heart of Heidegger’s notion of “das Man,” and for Sartre they are the models of bad faith. But whether or not they deserve the existentialist opprobrium, social roles are involved in how we relate to ourselves. And these have to do with how as individuals we stand in relation to a social group. For this we must turn to intersubjectivity.

Intersubjectivity and We-Intentionality The topic of intersubjectivity has largely been treated, in phenomenology as elsewhere, by examining the so-called face-to-face encounter. It is the basis of important features of human existence: desire and the erotic, friendship, sympathy and empathy, obligation and sacrifice. The other is my alter ego, mon semblable, my mirror image. But the irreconcilable difference of perspective also reminds us that this is the place of conflict and opposition, of antagonism and struggle, of domination and oppression. The face-to-face encounter is rightly taken to be central to how we relate to others. But is it the only way we relate to others? I would like to suggest that it’s not, and in order to make this point I would like to turn to a topic that is much discussed among phenomenologists these days: we-intentionality. If we examine this concept, we shall see that it opens up a different way of conceiving of intersubjectivity. Clearly, the concept of intentionality is the heart and soul of phenomenology. Directedness to a content, of-ness or about-ness, as introduced by Husserl in the Logical Investigations (1968), leads eventually to and even requires the phenomenological reduction that becomes the phenomenological method. If intentionality is a property or characteristic, to what does it belong? The seemingly obvious answer: consciousness. “All consciousness is consciousness of something” is the usual formula used to explain the concept of intentionality, and Husserl introduces intentionality in the context of a discussion of consciousness. And of course, consciousness is implicitly tied to the individual. But the question that has been raised since Husserl introduced the idea of “personalities of a higher order” (1962, 160) is whether we can attribute intentionality not only to individuals but also to communities or groups of individuals. We are encouraged to answer in the affirmative by observing ordinary language usage. “Parliament decided,” “Germany invaded Poland,” “the electorate can’t make up its mind,” etc. Social entities of various kinds, according to our way of speaking, have experiences, take decisions, act, find themselves in moods, feel anger. Of course, these groups are made up of individuals, and it may seem easy to think of these expressions as shorthand for describing the thoughts, actions, and feelings of individuals: members of Parliament, German generals, individual voters. This is less easy to do, however, when we think of cases where we speak not of “they” or “them,” but of “we” or “us,” i.e., of communities to which I consider myself to

126

D. Carr

belong. It is because of these differences that collective intentionality is usually referred to as “we-intentionality.” But what exactly is the difference between “we” and “they” in this context? There are in fact many important differences, and the linguistic one is the least of them. Many uses of “we” involve no collective intentionality at all. When my friend and I say, “we saw the Eiffel Tower,” there is a common object of our experiences, but the expression may mean no more than that I saw it and you saw it, perhaps even at different times. But if we saw it together, then we have not only a common object but also a shared experience, one which is properly ascribed not to me and you individually, but to us jointly. If we go to the store, nothing more than two separate actions, and two agents, are implied. But if we do the shopping, or play a game of tennis, or build a cottage, then we are engaged in activities whose only proper subject is we. When I say we in this sense, I am referring to a collection of persons to whom I stand not in a subject-object relation, as if I were observing them from outside, like a sociologist or an anthropologist. Instead I relate to them as a participant in our shared experience or activity. My relation to the group is one of membership. What I want to stress first here is that this is one of the primary ways we relate to others. And then I want to go on and say that this is also one of the primary ways we relate to ourselves. This is where self-awareness comes in.

Self-Awareness as Membership Awareness As we saw, phenomenology, with its origins in describing first-person singular experience, has largely framed the problem of intersubjectivity, or alterity, in terms of the face-to-face encounter in which the other stands over against me. But in we-­ experience we relate in a different way, and when we try to describe this experience, it should be noted that we do not give up the first-person point of view, but rather attend to its plural rather than singular form. The phenomenological approach allows us to describe and understand collective existence not from the outside but, so to speak, from the inside, consulting our experience as members or participants. It is a matter of describing and understanding the social experience of those involved. As we’ve seen, part of our social experience involves identifying ourselves with groups, and our relationship to these groups is not one of observation from the outside but one of membership and participation. This is exemplified in some (but not all) of our uses of the we-subject, and when we say “we act” or “we believe” or “we feel,” this is not just a shortcut for describing a collection of individual actions, thoughts, and feelings. The “we” refers to a group with which I identify myself. I can’t identify myself with something that I consider to be merely fictitious. For me the “we” with which I identify myself, and in whose actions, decisions, and thoughts I share or participate, is something real. This means that the we-subject is dependent on the individuals that make it up, to be sure, but in a very special way: in good

7  Historical Self-Awareness

127

phenomenological language, the we-subject is constituted by the individuals who make it up. We-subjects, then – communities large and small – have their reality in the social experience of individuals that constitute them by identifying with them and with the thoughts, actions, and other intentional functions they perform. We all know of and participate in such communities: family, profession, religion, ethnic and linguistic groups, political adherence, citizenship. We said that we-intentionality involves more than just the constitution of communities by their members. It also marks one of the most important ways we as individuals relate to other individuals. We relate differently to fellow participants and to non-participants. Shared membership and participation take the form of shared beliefs, shared actions, shared projects. A distinction between insiders and outsiders is created, an us-versus-them division. This need not be antagonistic, but it often is. Social conflict is most often a conflict between groups, and involves individuals only as members of opposed groups. But it still takes the form of relating to individuals as either fellows or non-fellows. This is different from the distinction between friend and foe. Fellow participants in some association may not be my friends, but I am still joined to them by virtue of shared membership. Antagonisms within one’s community may exist as well, but they may be about differing over means to achieve shared goals. The possibility of internal antagonism and strife, however, alerts us to the fragility and finitude of communities. They may be torn apart if disputes become insurmountable. As we saw, communities exist through the participation of their members. But this participation is not simply a given. It must be maintained to keep the community in continued existence. Thus membership affects the relations individuals have to each other. But there is a further relationship, and one that is most important for our purposes. Membership determines the relationship I have to myself. We have seen that groups are constituted when members “identify themselves” with the group. To identify myself in this way means that I am aware of myself as a member of some group. I am a liberal, I am a Canadian, I am an Anglophone, I am a Professor. These are ways I would answer the question “who are you?” or “what are you?” depending on the context. Such self-awarenesses can differ considerably in strength, commitment, engagement. Some are chosen and affirmed, others are passively acquired. Sometimes there is a movement from passivity to activity. In classical Marxist theory, there is a difference between class struggle and class consciousness. Being a member of the proletariat is a factual situation determined by the structure of industrial society. It may be something the individual is hardly aware of, if he identifies himself primarily as a believer, a child of God, a sinner. But Marx sought to make the proletariat aware of its status as a class exploited by the capitalist system. “Class consciousness” brings about a shift in the way the individual sees himself. Similar changes were mirrored in the early days of (second-wave) feminism, when “conscious raising” was the order of the day. The difference was between simply being a woman, which can be seen as a given, either biologically or socially, and seeing oneself as a woman within a patriarchal social system. We encountered the phenomenon of shifting identities when we spoke earlier of conversion narratives. Here we

128

D. Carr

see that such shifts often involve the question of which community one identifies with. Concomitant here is the phenomenon of the group becoming conscious of itself as a community, capable of we-intentionality manifested in experiences, feelings, and projects. As we said before, such an emerging we-subject is possible because of individuals identifying themselves with it. Thus, we can say, as we did before, that the group owes its reality to the individuals who make it up. But we can also say that individuals owe their identity to the groups with which they identify themselves. Another thing that emerges from this discussion is the obvious point that an individual can have more than one identity. We have spoken of shifting from one identity to another, but an individual can also have two or more identities at the same time. And often this presents no problem. I can be a responsible parent and a responsible citizen, two roles that entail very different activities and commitments without necessarily infringing on each other. But when they do, they can engender the most intense personal conflicts, those of divided and conflicting loyalties, memorialized in literature. Antigone is torn between her commitments to the polis and to the family. Romeo and Juliet both face the struggle between their identity as lovers and as members of their clan. All of us see ourselves in terms of more than one community, and in this sense we can say that our personal identity in an amalgam of such identities. But when these identities conflict, we are often required to choose one over the other, to decide, or perhaps to discover, what our true identity is. So a primary form of reflective (as opposed to pre-reflective) self-awareness is membership awareness. I am aware of myself as belonging to this or that community or group, usually more than one, even at the same time. So what is the nature of these entities from which I frame my self-awareness? Here we shall see that membership self-awareness is historical self-awareness.

Historical Temporality To see this, we must ask about the temporality of such entities. If they are truly intentional subjects “writ large,” if the we-subject exhibits a structure that mirrors that of the I-subjects, then we should expect it to possess a similar temporality. As we attempt to describe such temporality, it is important to remember that we are considering such entities not as observed from the outside, but as participants from the inside. Like the I-subject, the we-subject is not just a thing that persists through time, but is aware of its temporality by anticipating its future and remembering its past. Here we can adopt the first-person plural discourse. Existing (like everything else) in the present, and acting and experiencing in the present, we are aware of this present as present precisely because it stands in relation to a future and a past. Consider some examples. As an individual I may participate in groups or communities that are political (citizen, member of a political party), religious, professional, ethnic or linguistic, recreational, familial (kinship relations, from narrow to broad). Such memberships constitute my identity as a person, both for myself and

7  Historical Self-Awareness

129

for others. That is, I identify myself, and others identify me, as an American, a professor, a Catholic, a Jones, etc. Some of these identities may be more important than others in the sense that they play a larger part in my life, or claim more of my time and my emotions (such as loyalty, sentiments, nostalgia, etc.). My adherence to one identity can conflict with that of another. As we’ve seen, some of the classic personal and social conflicts that appear in history and literature are of this nature. What is important for present purposes is to see that social entities of this sort are essentially temporal in the same way that individual subjects are temporal. That is, as we said, they are not things that simply persist through time. They exist through actions and experiences that face and anticipate a future and have a past. In part this is because they depend on the actions and experiences of the individuals that make them up, even if they are not reducible to those individuals. But just as there are collective actions, and thus collective plans and prospects, so too is there is a collective memory and a collective past. What about the past, the present, and the future in this context? Metaphysical and epistemological disputes about the future usually turn on whether it is completely empty (it hasn’t happened yet) or completely full (it is causally determined in advance). Can we make true and false statements about the future? But these disputes have little to do with a phenomenological approach, which is concerned not with whether the future really is, or isn’t, but how it appears. On the one hand, it is always filled with content; that is, I have a protention not just of the next moment, but of a determined next moment. This is true even at the level of my body and its immediate surroundings. In walking across the room, I expect the floor to support me at every step. On the other hand, my expectations can be disappointed – I can fall on my face if the floor gives way. Surprise, pleasant or unpleasant, would be impossible without expectations. The openness of the future is therefore always one that cohabits with a certain determinateness. We have described the present as a vantage point on the past and future; but it is also a turning point in which my protentions become real – or are disappointed. As a field of unceasing change, the present nevertheless unfolds against a background of stable and changeless surroundings, the world of space and material permanence. As for the past, it seems to contrast with the future: while the future is open, the past is closed. What is done is done, and cannot be undone. Like the spatial horizon of an unchanging landscape, with receding fields in the foreground and looming mountains in the background, the unchanging past provides the stable frame for the changing present. And yet, like the future, it can be said to combine elements of the changing and the unchanging. Remember that we are not speaking here of the way things are but of the way they appear. Memory is fallible, and my firmest memories can turn out to have been mistaken. They are also subject to re-interpretation. Retrospection can reveal a meaning in events and choices that is different from the meaning they had when they happened. Think of the problem of unintended consequences, something that bedevils us all. I make a choice with the expectation that it will have certain consequences. Now, later, I see that it led to completely different consequences. That decision may not have changed, but it now has a meaning completely different from the one it had when I made it.

130

D. Carr

Here we are using the term “meaning” in a way that is completely appropriate for the sphere of human actions and interactions. The temporal field is a Gestalt, like the melody, in which each element is determined by its place in a temporal whole. Events, actions, and experiences are not items isolated from each other but come embedded in a temporal complex of present, past, and future. The meaning of the present we are living through is determined by the envisioned and expected future, which is in turn affected by the remembered past. The meaning of the remembered past is constantly changing in light of the experienced present. And all of this is as true of the we-intentionality of social experience as it is of individual experience. We have now arrived at the place where we can speak of “history” in a more focused way. The term is associated more with social than with individual existence, and we have tried to illuminate social existence with the help of phenomenological concepts and terms: we-intentionality, temporality, etc. But the term “history” is usually meant to indicate the past, and we need to focus our attention on what these phenomenological investigations tell us about the past, and indeed what we usually think of as the historical past. History is sometimes called “society’s memory,” and the concept of “collective memory” has been a prominent and important topic of investigation by philosophers, sociologists, and historians. These concepts correlate with the view we have been developing here, namely that retention, recollection, and the remembered past belong not just to individuals but to plural subjects such as communities. They “belong” to such entities not only in the sense that such-and-such a past is attributed to a community by an outside observer (though that could also be true). A community has a past in the same way that an individual has a past: as a horizon and background of present experience. As an individual I have a past that differs in large part from everyone else’s; but as a participant and member of a community I also share in the past of that community. It is the experience of participation in community, including the memory of that community’s past, that constitutes the experience of history. This is the experience of history we all have, whether we are historians or not. Understanding this collective experience of the past means reflecting on it in such a way as to describe its commitments and beliefs and the world they constitute. While each community has its own past and thus its own world, phenomenology looks for what all such communities have in common – the essence, in other words, of communal pastness. But it must be attentive to examples as well. To belong to a religious community, for example, is to share a belief in a certain tradition or story of its past, with the occurrence of key events, persons, and founding acts, continuity, crisis, and renewal, etc. To belong to and participate in such a community as an individual is to share in a past that extends back before that individual’s birth. Did these events and persons really exist and happen as they are remembered in the tradition? This, I would suggest, is not a phenomenological question, though it could become a historical question. The role of history as a discipline, as it is practiced today, is often to assess critically the past that is consecrated by tradition. But that would not fall within phenomenology’s purview. To be sure, dissent may arise

7  Historical Self-Awareness

131

within a community regarding the facts and significance of its past. So important is the consensus on its past to the coherence and viability of a community that such dissent can lead to its dissolution. The Protestant Reformation and the split in the Western Church could be described in these terms. In this case, phenomenology could get involved, not in order to settle the conflicts but to describe them and assess their significance for communal existence.

Historical Self-Awareness Historical self-awareness means that I am aware of myself as a member of a social entity that has a history. The latter is composed of other persons with whom I share a common subjectivity, one that is expressed when I say “we.” This may mean that we share a place or territory, our home. We may also share a language, a set of attitudes, a sense of humour, traditions of culture and ways of thinking. Any one of these individual elements may be missing. It is often pointed out that the Jews have persisted as a community through much of their history without a common language or a common territory. But one thing that cannot be missing, I would argue, is history. Members of a community share a history. Primarily this means a shared past. But it also means a shared present and shared future. For the Jews the common territory, missing in the present (hence the term diaspora, or dispersion), was located in the historical past. And with the birth of Zionism it was projected into the future. Here we can return to the narrative conception of the self, except that here the protagonist or central subject of the narrative is not myself but the community in whose history I share. And indeed, the concept of narrative has played a major role in the philosophy of history in recent decades. Beginning with Arthur Danto (1985) and continuing through Hayden White (1973) and Paul Ricoeur (1984–1988), many thinkers have seen historical knowledge as a form of story-telling rather than an exercise of social-scientific explanation. Just as I can identify myself with multiple groups at the same time, I also participate in multiple histories. My identity as a citizen, as a member of a racial or religious or linguistic minority (or majority), as a laborer or a professional, all involve me in separate but related histories. And, as we saw before, these multiple histories can co-exist peacefully, or they can be the source of acute conflict. Remember that our topic is not just historical awareness, but historical self-­ awareness. I can be aware of other histories, not my own, from the outside, though many of the elements we have mentioned, such as narrative historical temporality, will be present. We could also distinguish between historical self-awareness and non-historical self-awareness. There is more to me, it could be argued, than my social-historical identity. We think of ourselves as having an identity, a personal identity, which is private and escapes our social entanglement. Such an identity is still temporal, to be sure, but not historical in the usual sense of the word.

132

D. Carr

Historical self-awareness is a special, and important, form of self-awareness. Here I see myself as, or in terms of, belonging to the history of my community. Thanks to the enduring character of the communities to which I belong, this form of self-awareness links me as an individual to the past, even the distant past, and gives the self historical roots extending far beyond its individual lifetime. But it is in the present that the historical character of the self is most acutely felt and experienced. In our own day, the pandemic is a historic event of sweeping proportions, covering the entire globe, and yet each of us is related to it in the most intimate and bodily way. It calls forth actions and behaviors that relate each person to the global situation. Thus, it extends far beyond the sphere of personal health and self-preservation. Appeals to solidarity and communal responsibility call on each individual to be self-aware as a member of the whole. Much the same could be said of concerns about climate change and global warming. In both cases, natural events become historical events by affecting, and by calling forth responses from, the human community. But not all historical events occupy such an immense scale. Communities that are closer to me – my city, my country, my habitat, even my family – can be riven by historic convulsions in which I share, and which affect me directly and personally. Any of these communities can be subject to oppression and violence from outside forces. Here my self-awareness, my sense of who I am, is forcibly a historical self-awareness, as I cannot escape the history that is forced upon me and, more importantly, on us. Many of us here, and now, will be familiar with this experience. Dilthey wrote that “we are historical beings before being observers of history, and only because we are the former do we become the latter.” The idea of historical self-awareness captures the sense in which we are “historical beings.” This is what Dilthey, along with Husserl, Heidegger, and others, referred to as “historicity” (Geschichtlichkeit). Another term that was used, especially by Husserl, was “sedimentation.” This geological metaphor suggests that the ground we stand on is made of layers, built up on top of one another. This has its roots in Husserl’s theory of time-consciousness. The present is what it is only by contrast with the past – and the future. But “the past” is not an undifferentiated container of all that is past. It was itself present and stood out against its own past. Hence the idea of successive layers, each of which is defined by what it succeeds. Husserl developed his ideas on time-consciousness with reference to the individual subject. In keeping with our shift of focus from the I- to the We-subject, and to the idea of self-awareness as membership awareness, we can think of sedimentation as expressing the relation not merely of the individual’s relation to the individual past, but also the individual’s relation to the past of the community to which the individual belongs. Here I am aware of myself as belonging to a We-subject that has a past. Therein lies my historicity, my status as a historical being. The sedimented past of the community become my sedimented past as well.

7  Historical Self-Awareness

133

Conclusion In search of an understanding of self-awareness, we began by distinguishing between pre-reflective and reflective self-awareness. Focusing on the latter, we asked after the nature of the self of which I am aware in reflective self-awareness. Emphasizing the temporality of the self-aware subject, we turned to the concept of narrative as a way of capturing the self-relation as a form of story-telling. Using Dilthey’s notion of the coherence of life and the model of autobiography, we presented the idea of self-awareness as a process of formulating, telling, and acting out a life-story of which I am the protagonist. Under this concept, the self is not a thing but a process of self-awareness – not a cognition but an activity. The ideas of the narrative self and of narrative self-awareness capture much that is important in reflective self-awareness. But something important is left out, namely, the social dimension of selfhood and self-awareness. As MacIntyre points out, I am not the sole author of my life-story, and it is necessary to understand that and how the self-relation is mediated by others. The phenomenological account of intersubjectivity deals not only with the face-to-face encounter with the other subject, but also with the manner in which the subjects join in a community and become part of a We-subject. In the concept of membership, we find a way of differentiating types of relations to others. We relate differently to fellow members of a group and to non-members. But the concept of membership is also important to the understanding of self-awareness. In reflective self-awareness I identify myself as belonging to a group, such as family, profession, citizenship, religion, etc. In this sense, then, reflective self-awareness is membership awareness. And this is where reflective self-awareness reveals itself as historical self-­ awareness. As a member of a social entity like a nation, a family, or a profession, I identify myself with something that has a history. It is a history that is shared among those who belong, and it is often a history that extends back before my birth and will endure beyond my death. As we saw, not all historical awareness is self-awareness, and not all self-awareness is historical. But historical self-awareness is a major and important aspect of our relation to ourselves, one that links us to the social world and to the historical world.

References Augustine. (1949). The confessions of St. Augustine. (E. Pusey, Trans.). The Modern Library. Danto, A. (1985). Narration and knowledge. Columbia University Press. Descartes, R. (1993). Meditations on first philosophy. (D. Cress, Trans.). Hackett Publishing. Dilthey, W. (1970). Der Aufbau der geschichtlichen Welt in den Geisteswissenschaften. Suhrkamp Verlag. Hegel, G. W. F. (1952). Phänomenologie des Geistes (6th ed.). Felix Meiner Verlag. Heidegger, M. (1957). Sein und Zeit. Max Niemeyer Verlag. Husserl, E. (1962). In S. Strasser (Ed.), Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge (Vol. 1 of Husserliana) (2nd ed.). Martinus Nijhoff.

134

D. Carr

Husserl, E. (1966). In R.  Boehm (Ed.), Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins (1893–1917) (Vol. 10 of Husserliana). Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, E. (1968). Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter Band: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis. I. Teil, fünfte Auflage. Max Niemeyer Verlag. MacIntyre, A. (1981). After virtue. Notre Dame University Press. Ricoeur, P. (1984–1988). Time and narrative. 3 vols. (Kathleen McLaughlin & David Pellauer, Trans.). University of Chicago Press. Sartre, J.-P. (1966). La Transcendence de l’ego. Vrin. Schapp, W. (1976). In Geschichten Verstrickt. B. Heymann. White, H. (1973). Metahistory: The historical imagination in nineteenth-century Europe. Johns Hopkins University Press. Zahavi, D. (2005). Subjectivity and selfhood. MIT Press.

Chapter 8

Individuation and Self-Awareness in Wilhelm Dilthey Eric S. Nelson

Introduction: Individuality and Self-Awareness The early thought of Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) was shaped by his teachers.1 They belonged to the historical school of Ranke and the German empiricist tradition of Schleiermacher, Trendelenburg, Beneke, and Ueberweg. While the former stressed understanding each historical individual and context in its own terms, immanently from out of itself without the hierarchical ordering of Enlightenment and Hegelian philosophies of history, the latter expressed a fuller conception of relational lived-experience (Erlebnis) in contrast with the idea of atomistic sense experience (Erfahrung) that dominated British empiricism and French positivism with which it contended. The historicism of the historical school and empiricism, for Dilthey, had both proven themselves to be one-sided. On the one hand, by avoiding theory to attend to the concrete particular, the historical school failed to adequately question and conceptualize its own interpretive and theoretical presuppositions. On the other hand, by reducing experience to atomistic sensation, abstract empiricism had lost the ability to articulate how experience is felt, perceived, and lived in the relational or dynamic structural nexus (Zusammenhang) of concrete historical life. It is in this situation that the early Dilthey called for a return to an unprejudiced and uninhi­ bited empiria (unbefangene Empirie) without doctrinal empiricism (GS 1:81, GS

 For an overview of Dilthey’s life and thought, see de Mul (2004), Makkreel (1993), and Nelson (2019, 1–18). All Dilthey citations are to Dilthey (1914–2005) and cited in-text as GS with volume:pagination; quotations are taken from Dilthey (1991–2019) and cited in-text as SW. 1

E. S. Nelson (*) Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Kowloon, Hong Kong e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Geniusas (ed.), Varieties of Self-Awareness, Contributions to Phenomenology 121, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39175-0_8

135

136

E. S. Nelson

18:130).2 His work proposed a new – and, for us, interdisciplinary – model of philosophy and the human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften) that would lead to his groundbreaking  1883 work Introduction to the Human Sciences (GS 1) which sought to dismantle the aporias of historicism and empiricism. Two striking and controversial methodological features of this pivotal work were the priority of modes of individuation and self-awareness as defining human existence and its systematic scientific study. Both elements appeared to Dilthey’s subsequent anti-individualist critics  – from Simmel and Lukács to Gadamer and Luhmann  – as residues of the romantic cult of individuality and idealist self-­ consciousness. Gadamer expresses this suspicion succinctly in Truth and Method: “The self-awareness of the individual is only a flickering in the closed circuits of historical life” (2013, 289).3 Such structural, systems-oriented analyses (whether structure is conceived through the economic base, society, power, or tradition) construe the individual self and its self-relation as determined effects and illusory appearances of more fundamental impersonal natural and social forces.4 Such interpretations fail to recognize its transformed function in Dilthey’s relational hermeneutics which naturalized and historicized the ostensibly self-grounding subject of romantic and idealist discourses, resituating, in particular, the model of autonomy as a socially situated self-formation (Selbstbildung) associated with  his  anti-­ metaphysical and liberalizing reading of the  “idealism of freedom” expressed in Schiller, Humboldt, and Schleiermacher.5 In an 1875 work, Dilthey argues for the necessity of proceeding from the priority of the individual while rejecting the false individualism that separates it from social interaction and insisting on its socially mediated and relational character (GS 5:60). Individuals are approached as differentiated formations of effective interaction (Wechselwirkung). As the sociologist Mannheim (1965, 40) remarks, Dilthey aimed at interpretively understanding the life-nexus (Lebenszusammenhang) as a reciprocal and functional interdependence of the individual self and the social world. In a late note, Dilthey elucidates how the individual, as a structured-structuring nexus of lived-experiences, is self-aware in belonging to a shared life-nexus and through the medium of being relationally situated with things and persons (GS 24:77). This self

 See Nelson (2007, 108–128; 2013, 141–160) on Dilthey’s relation with scientific empiricism, positivism, and naturalism. 3  Cf. Gadamer (2016, 73–122). 4  Note that there is some confusion over the definition of historicism. It is defined either as (1) the diversity of historical individuals and periods (as in nineteenth-century German thought and Dilthey), or, confusingly, as the opposite as (2) structurally reductive explanations of the diversity of historical phenomena to a hegemonic philosophy of history (as in Popper [1957]). It is used in the first sense in the present discussion. 5  Cf. Gadamer (2016, 215). Revealingly, Gadamer mentions the weaknesses of Dilthey’s “cultural liberalism” without addressing his reformist political liberalism. He also treats Humboldt as an advocate of aesthetic individualism, ignoring the ethical-political individualism of works such as his 1792 Ideas for an attempt to determine the limits of the effectiveness of the state (known in English as The Limits of the State) in which freedom and diversity are the mutually reinforcing conditions and results of self-formation. 2

8  Individuation and Self-Awareness in Wilhelm Dilthey

137

is no longer the intrinsically or innately given individuality of Humboldt and Schleiermacher, as it and its sense of freedom are developmentally conditioned and formed (gestaltet) (GS 5:236–237). Dilthey’s hermeneutically situated and participating individual should be understood not so much through the paradigm of idealist self-consciousness as through the relational involvement and self-interpretation of the first- and second-person participant perspective. Unlike the sociologies of  Max Weber and Simmel, this interpretive perspective of understanding (verstehen) entails a methodological and structural individualism for Dilthey.6 The structurally-formed individual is methodologically primary, since collective identities and subjects are even more elusive, mythological, and questionable than individual selves, as individuals (even as bundles of preconscious instincts and desires) are inextricably formed – as more or less (to varying degrees) active and self-aware social participants – through the medium and objectifications of historical life itself.

Historical Life and Relational Individuality Herder, Humboldt, and the liberal side of German historicism stressed the historical primacy of the individuality and diversity of forms of life and lived-experience, the primal cells of history, with each individual and generation demanding its own recognition in the process of interpretation.7 Dilthey’s category of “historical life” (which overlaps with, yet is distinct from, Hegel’s ethical life and Husserl’s lifeworld) similarly begins with the changing diverse realities of naturally and historically developing individuals and their relational bonds and external social organizations, from family and friendship to the state. In this context, historicity (Geschichtlichkeit) signifies the lived participant’s perspective and positionality within a specific community and generation. More unique perhaps is Dilthey’s analysis of how epistemology and science are internally generated from life’s own immanent self-reflexivity and expression. Innewerden encompasses a spectrum of self-relations – including feeling, willing, and thinking – and is correlated with Äußerung or expressive externalization (GS 19:57). Self-reflexivity constitutes what will later be designated as the first- and second-person perspectives of interactive participants in social life. This has several significant implications. First, in contrast to the monadic individual self of phenomenology, this perspective is already inherently participatory, social, and worldly in Dilthey’s analysis. It involves an individuated relational nexus rather than a pure  On Dilthey’s version of structuralism, see Rodi (2003). On structure in Dilthey, see also Hamid (2021, 633–651). 7  On human divergence in Dilthey, also note Marom (2014, 1–13). The intercultural implications of this pluralistic model of forms of life and philosophy thematized by Dilthey and – more specifically, in relation to interculturality by his student Georg Misch  – are examined in chap. 5 of Nelson (2017). 6

138

E. S. Nelson

individual self-consciousness. Second, unlike subsequent irrationalist life-­ philosophies, for which Dilthey paved the way according to Lukács’ (1955) polemical narrative of German irrationalism, individuality and self-awareness are not the alienation of life from its vital intuitive nature, or foreign elements distorting its undifferentiated natural givenness and immediacy, but are rather  – in Dilthey’s account  – constitutive elements in life’s very self-formation, interpretation, and expression. Third, self-reflection (Selbstbesinnung, which is operative prior to the differentiation of life and science, the practical and the theoretical), conceptualization, and philosophy are consequently elements of the very structural formation of human life in its reflexive self-understanding and vocation (GS 5:375). Moreover, Dilthey’s strategy indicates prospects of a relational individuality which contest the reductive identities of individualism and conservative and revolutionary collectivism. For instance, Ernst Troeltsch in 1922 did not consider Dilthey a proper member of the historical school, but rather a modification of liberal, German, Enlightenment thought, as Dilthey prioritized social formations emerging from the relations between diverse and plural individuals rather than perceiving them as the expressions of “national spirit,” a concept that Dilthey forcefully rejected as a mystification in his disputes with Moritz Lazarus and the psychology of peoples (Völkerpsychologie), statist nationalism, and other discourses insofar as they identified a nation, people, or race with a real organic unity.8 Dilthey’s appropriation of Hegelian categories in his later thought, particularly ethical life and objective spirit, tends to desubstantialize and pluralize them (GS 7:150). Dilthey admired the early young republican, pantheistic, life-philosophical Hegel (who he helped rediscover in his 1905 Die Jugendgeschichte Hegels) and the phenomenological Hegel while rejecting what he perceived as the overly metaphysical and reactionary elements in Hegel’s mature thought (GS 4:258). Hegel and Schelling, the elderly Dilthey could still remark, betrayed philosophy and its freedom in placing it in subservience to the state (258). Dilthey’s  liberalizing strategy was misinterpreted in Lukács’s critique of Dilthey’s book on Hegel in his 1938 work The Young Hegel. This strategy marks an alternative relational individualist and weak holist reading of Hegel in contrast to right- and left-Hegelian totalizing tendencies. Thus, in his two 1890 lecture courses, later published as the System of Ethics, he proposes an alternative to Hegel’s nationalist communitarian spirit and socialism’s collectivist naturalism (GS 10:15, 124). Dilthey’s “social ethics” would confront the modern social ills powerfully thematized by utilitarianism, socialism, and literary realism on altered grounds. Anticipating Hannah Arendt’s pluralism, this ethics sought to overcome the deficits of abstract individualism and collectivism by prioritizing the variety of associations operative between plural and diverse individualities. Dilthey advocated more equal,  Compare Troeltsch (1922, 280–282) and the discussion in Kornberg (1981, 16–30). Dilthey (GS 1:41 and GS 6:43) critiqued organic and totalizing models of ethnic and national spirit. As collective systems are based in relations between particulars, for example,  he rejected national psychology’s identification of national spirit with the soul and the state with the body of a people (GS 22:3). 8

8  Individuation and Self-Awareness in Wilhelm Dilthey

139

just, and robust forms of social welfare for the sake of promoting individual self-­ formation. Dilthey’s moderate pluralistic and reformist social-political position promoted the extension of “bourgeois” liberal rights rather than reaction in response to the growth of social democracy, which he at times praises for its pursuit of greater freedom (GS 4:123, 236). Dilthey’s reformist  position would be simultaneously perceived as overly disintegrative of piety and tradition (from Paul Yorck von Wartenburg to Gadamer) and an impediment to revolutionary transformation (Lukács).9 The possibilities of a relational individualism and freedom expressed in Dilthey’s works are interwoven with his reformist liberal political orientation, which became increasingly more modest – yet was not abandoned – as he transitioned from a “left liberal” to “moderate liberal” politics and adapted to the politics of the Bismarckian Prussian state. These possibilities remain pertinent, as contemporary discourses continue to be ensnared in a modern dialectic, diagnosed in Dilthey’s 1911 philosophy of the conflict of worldviews, between isolating and reifying the individual subject (the worldview of the idealism of freedom) and reducing the self to a mere appearance of the forces and structures of nature (naturalism) or society (objective idealism).10 A fundamental problem of these opposing tendencies is that they express partial truths, and, given the relativity and incommensurability of discourses and forms of life, there is no common or universal measure to resolve their dispute, much less a speculative absolute that can absorb all differences and contradictions. None of these worldviews and their transitory metaphysical constructions, in their partiality and fixation, are adequate to the first- and second-person participant perspective of the lived-experience of being a conditioned-and-conditioning self within the world. In the following sections of this chapter, I propose returning to Dilthey’s suggestive hermeneutical alternative to the two restrictive poles of this dialectic. Dilthey is primarily known in subsequent hermeneutics and social theory as a philosopher of reflexive self-awareness, self-reflection, and structural methodological individualism. Dilthey’s arguments for the interpretive psychology of the individual and methodological-­structural individualism were at the heart of the polemical controversies of his lifetime (e.g., with experimental psychology and the new sciences of the psychology of peoples and sociology), as well as the critiques of his subsequent conservative nationalist and revolutionary socialist critics. They perceived in these strategies the specter of Cartesian and idealist consciousness and a romantic individuality indissoluble in nature and society and thereby miss its distinctive sense and consequences that this chapter is an endeavor to critically retrieve.  For instance, as seen in Gadamer (2016, 215) and throughout Lukács (1955). Both interpreters depoliticalize Dilthey’s philosophy while condemning it for its liberalism, leaving no space for the individual judgment that is key to ethical-political autonomy from Kant and Dilthey to Arendt. For a more appreciative approach of Dilthey, specifically in respect to Hegel, see Marcuse (1932). On Dilthey and Hegel, also cf. Rockmore (2003, 477–494). 10  On Dilthey’s political sensibility, see Nelson (2019, 1–18). On conflicting worldviews constituting an era or generation, in contrast to a substantive unity, see Nelson (2011, 19–38). 9

140

E. S. Nelson

 ilthey’s Philosophy of Relational Individuality D and Its Background Dilthey’s philosophy of relational and cooperative individuality, which powerfully differs from atomistic and possessive individualism, is evident in the following quotation from his 1910 magnum opus The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences: The carriers of this constant creation of values and goods in the world of human spirit are individuals, communities, and the cultural systems in which individuals cooperate. This cooperation is determined by the fact that, in order to realize values, individuals subject themselves to rules and set themselves purposes. All these modes of cooperation manifest a life-concern connected to the human essence that links individuals with each other – a core, as it were, that cannot be grasped psychologically but is revealed in every such system of relations among human beings. (SW 3:175–176; GS 7:153–154)

He continues this passage by elucidating how social and cultural systems are structural unities formed and sedimented in relations of cooperation and conflict between individuals. Individuals are, at the same time, formed through  structural systems and can be explained as such from an impersonal third-person perspective; thus they have a particular status, which entails the hermeneutical problems and possibilities of understanding and interpretation, through their reflexive self-relationality and forms of tacit and explicit self-awareness as a relational “I” and “we” that is constituted in I-thou relationships.11 Individuality is, directly echoing Humboldt (1841–1852, 1:20), the undecomposable “secret of the world” (Dilthey, GS 18:197). It was, as illustrated throughout this chapter, a core concern throughout Dilthey’s philosophical development. It is, no doubt, superficial to describe its significance as merely aesthetic, romantic, and psychological (as in Gadamer [2013, 2016]), because individuality is pivotal to Dilthey’s project of a critique of historical reason (how the categories are divergently lived and enacted in individual life) and his prioritization of practical over theoretical philosophy. Practical philosophy addresses cultivating individual ways of life and social associations and organizations (GS 10:13). In Dilthey’s early notes on descriptive psychology dated around 1880, the primacy of practical philosophy is closely connected with the socially immersed and engaged self. Thus, he describes how the individual does not signify isolated existence, self-enclosed in its own consciousness and ego; it is rather a complex relational configuration that encompasses other individuals, society, and even nature (GS 18:177). The greater the feeling of one’s own life (Lebensgefühl), and the cultivation of a sense of its unity and purposiveness, the more it touches and encompasses the life and feelings of others and the variable richness of natural phenomena (177). Feeling and suffering with others is preliminary to more complex forms of interpretive understanding, tragic art, and  Concerning I-you relations in Dilthey, see Dilthey (GS 19:355, 7:208). Interestingly, Dilthey was a teacher of and source for the young Martin Buber. 11

8  Individuation and Self-Awareness in Wilhelm Dilthey

141

ethical solidarity (GS 10:77). There is no known underlying metaphysical substance or unity, as the sense of self is simultaneously socially-historically formed and reflexively felt as my own and as free (GS 18:182–183). This is not the Cartesian “I think,” but a relational and reflexive as “it-is-felt-by-me.” As these two dimensions are bound together, without any metaphysical grounding or hierarchy between them, the latter self-reflexivity is not merely an illusory consequence but a condition of historical formation. History presupposes participants, whose needs lead to relations of well-being, self-assertion, and care, as it is the reflexive self who is capable of historically situated agency, learning, and understanding. In earlier epistemological fragments, dated 1874/79, he called for a reformulation of empiricism in response to the differences between Mill and Helmholtz vis-­ à-­ vis Schleiermacher, Beneke, and Ueberweg. Dilthey here developed early formulations of self-awareness and individuation. He notes, regarding the first, the reflexive, proto-intentional, and double directionality toward self and world of any experience that entails the differentiation of a shared experiential structure into selfand world-awareness (GS 18:194). Life emerges in the differentiation of feelings of interiority and exteriority (157). This developmental, psychological, and complex whole of self-world awareness and relationality forms an immeasurable and incommensurable singular, the “secret of the world” (195–197). This analysis marks a crucial transition that is based on practical and philosophical rather than aesthetic concerns. First, it ensues from a metaphysics of individuality, informed by a pantheistic individualist interpretation of Spinoza and Schleiermacher, in which the “world-soul is an abyss of individuality” and – in opposition to traditional metaphysics – there are neither fixed essences nor a fixed totality, but only differentiation and individuation (198–199). Second, it advances toward an immanent and reflexive interpretive human science of historical participants. Still, however, there is another significant Humboldtian facet to the emergence of Dilthey’s individualism and his liberalism. Let us briefly consider this point. Dilthey’s concern is not so much focused on questions of the religious, rationalist, and idealist subject, but rather on the historical formation (Bildung) and emancipation (Befreiung) of the individual self (GS 18:197). This developmental approach proceeds from mere particularity through expression and objectivization to the sense and worth of a socially realized individuality. Whereas Schleiermacher’s individuation concerned the situated finite striving for universality and the infinite, Humboldt’s individual primarily has ethical, pedagogical, and social-political functions that limit the powers of society and the state over the individual. These functions continue to resonate in Dilthey’s subsequent works that insist not only on negative liberty, as in possessive individualist and libertarian misinterpretations of Humboldt, but participatory freedom and satisfaction in the mutual and shared co-formation of social and cultural life (GS 19:294). If the state is, by its very nature, a nexus of power, then freedom signifies partaking in, reforming, and pluralizing existing power relations. Despite this insight, neither author dared to embrace fuller political rights and democratic participation, as both overcautiously (given their own liberal aspirations) concluded that democratic free association best flourishes through the security and stability of individual rights in a constitutional monarchy. Perhaps

142

E. S. Nelson

recognizing his own  analogous fate, Dilthey expresses his sympathy and disappointment in Humboldt as a great defender of the free association of active individuals, the most democratic of the Prussian reformers, and as inadequately politically effective (GS 12:71). By the late 1870s, Dilthey still prioritizes questions of individuation while skeptically  abandoning metaphysics. His empiricism led to a moderate skepticism wherein the unity of the self and the world is more a feeling than a cognitively justifiable assertion, a foundational unitary science is lacking, and modern existence is confronted with the plurality of natural and human sciences and the unfathomability of the fundamental riddles and questions of life. This moderate skeptical strategy marked his reply to the Ignorabimus controversy over the limits of scientific knowledge initiated in 1872 by Emil Du Bois Reymond.12 Individuation constitutes both the core problem of the human sciences and their methodology and the ineffable question to which art, religion, and philosophy signify finite, partial responses. Finally, in a series of autobiographical reflections near the end of his life, Dilthey retrospectively emphasized the importance of individuality in his intellectual development. He noted how he had learned from Schleiermacher how human experience is the determinate individuation of the universe and the meaning-forming individual is, in significant respects, the basic reality with which history is concerned (GS 5:4, 10). While both the metaphysics of spirit and the positivism of nature teach the primacy of more fundamental determining systematic structures, based on reconstructions that have their point of departure in abstracted and generalized individual lived-experience, the first- and second-person participant perspective of the individual constitutes the reality of lived-experience (11) such that we cannot consistently live a life, or study it in its own sense as if it were merely a derivative illusory appearance (5). The theoretical elimination of the concrete particular individual, a sense of self as there-for-me, in the priority of the social proves to be incoherent. Dilthey’s structural and methodological individualism does not presuppose the impoverished, abstract, isolated or possessive individual, as we have seen, as this self is a formation of the intersection of forces in which I experience my life “as my own” relationally with others and things. Individuation is accordingly, already from the beginning, relational and social, as we learn from and find joy in others’ individuation, self-formation, and fullness of personal life (GS 5:14). As he noted of the dynamic of individuality and sociability in Schleiermacher, given its relational character, the unfolding of individual life brings about higher forms of sociability and solidarity, as it is an impoverished individual who does not enable and enrich others. This social sensibility is likewise at play in pedagogy. Education, drawing on the forces operative in society, should be differentiated to promote the formation of individual capacities and to coordinate common social and personal individual goods (GS 10:118–119).

12

 On this dispute, see chap. 3 of Beiser (2014).

8  Individuation and Self-Awareness in Wilhelm Dilthey

143

Individuation and Becoming a Self: A Sketch The preceding sections have left us with several lingering questions. What sort of self or individual is at stake here? How should we account for these experiences of being a situated self and having a life of one’s own that is neither reified in the fiction of a substantive subject, which has become questionable in late modernity, nor eliminated as merely epiphenomenal? How is this structural-relational individual linked with the awareness of the first-person participant standpoint? Dilthey defined an individual life as a structural effective nexus (Wirkungszusammenhang) (GS 7:159, 248) and consciousness as a formational acquired psychic nexus (erworbener seelischer Zusammenhang) (14). In Dilthey’s interpretive psychology, in the wake of Humean skepticism and Kantian critical philosophy, the self cannot merely intuit itself as a unitary givenness and immediacy. Its self-consciousness does not disclose a pure ego, mind, or will, but is inevitably entangled with its language and world. The self perceives and recognizes itself, insofar as it experiences through a relational nexus, in the co-givenness (Mitgegebenheit) of itself and its world as “being-there-for-me” (da-für-mich-sein), and a sense of subjectivity is inextricably correlated with a sense of an objective world that resists and encompasses it. In this there-for-me, environing external reality is co-given concurrently and with as much certainty as the self (GS 1:xix; 19:9). That is, the world is reflexively, with its double directionality, experienced in its “being there for me” and not solely either as “for us” or “in itself.” This worldly self is experienced as affective, bodily, social, and vulnerable, as materially and socially finite and other-dependent. Along with the intractable facticity and resistance of its situation, it is experienced as environmentally and perspectivally individuated and as immanently and reflexively “my own.” This reflexive spontaneity and self-awareness constitute a sense of the self as a conditioned, receptive, and active agent within an environment. This sense can lead to not merely reproducing the given or existing national spirit and potentially resisting and modifying – through processes of natural and social adaptation, learning, and reform – the structural forces of nature (economy and technology) and society (ethics and politics) through which it is formed. Dilthey maintained that the individual is determined and formed through the intersection of cultural and social systems that it self-reflexively and potentially self-reflectively appropriates and modifies in processes of learning and self-­ formation (GS 1:37; 5:63; 10:118). It appears to be nothing but a derivative appearance of each system and yet remains – in the variation of its responses and its own sense of itself  – irreducible to any given system. As Humboldt remarks in On Language, “all understanding is simultaneously a non-understanding, and all agreement in ideas and emotions is at the same time a separation” (1841–1852, 6:66). The individual is ineffable. Accordingly, for the moderate skeptic Dilthey, there is a spontaneity that is ineffable to understanding, which is inevitably incomplete and relative, even to an autobiographical and biographical description that best approximates its complex experiential reality (GS 1:29; 5:330).

144

E. S. Nelson

The relational self in Dilthey’s reconstruction is an intersection of natural and social processes as explained in the third-person perspective of the natural and structural social sciences. Yet, this historically situated self is capable of autobiographical and reflective individuation, self-awareness, and self-formation that calls for interpretive understanding – which he defined as the “rediscovery of the I in the you” (GS 7:191) and as “world-opening” (205) – in everyday self-other relations, life contexts, as well as in the forms of inquiry that interpret historical life from out of itself or in relation to its own lived participant perspective. Dilthey preferred the model of pre-reflective reflexivity to the static explanatory model of the unconscious conveyed by Schopenhauer and von Hartmann. This pre-reflectively felt reflexive self-awareness is a crucial moment in the life-nexus that entails, through resistance and adaptation, the differentiation of self and others, environment, and world; the formation of an autobiographical sense of self through the continuities and discontinuities of a life; and the hermeneutical, social, and material activities through which the individual not only manifests social systems as an appearance but, as a reflexively aware participant in their reproduction, appropriates, resists, and potentially reforms them.

Models of Subjectivity and Self-Awareness As Hume and Kant had already demonstrated, the empirical self fails to adequately intuit and know itself as a substantial unity independent of its shifting self- and world-relations. Dilthey, as a historian and as a researcher of the history of autobiography and biography, recognizes a plurality of ways of being a conditional and limited, yet felt and reflexively self-aware, self. The lived self of an everyday historical life-nexus and discursive models and imaginaries of the self reveal multifaceted configurations. There is the self of felt religious interiority, as expressed in Augustine or Pascal, or the conceptualist rationalist and idealist subjects posited by Descartes and Fichte in relation to their own lived-experiences of being a self. There are, furthermore, imagined selves and literary portraits of the self and their passions as proto-romantically narrated in Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther or realistically depicted in Theodor Fontane’s Effi Briest. The self is thus not given as an essence, substance, or predetermined destiny, but is formed and individuated through its worldly interactions and responses such that, with Nietzsche, one can speak of the art of the self. There are myriad ways of living a life that enact and individuate common structures. Structures are relative relational wholes or formational systems characterized by variation and diversity of forms. In Dilthey’s structuralist revision of critical transcendental philosophy, prefiguring Heidegger’s existentalia, the transcendental is inseparable from its diverse a posteriori and empirical predications in concrete ways of being enacted as formal categories become real and historically modifiable

8  Individuation and Self-Awareness in Wilhelm Dilthey

145

categories of life (Lebenskategorien).13 Life-categories are not static grounding presuppositions of the understanding, but immanent structures realized in lived-­ experience and its conditions. Conditional selves are explained in the sciences as formed by natural forces and social systems and interpretively understood through expressions and relations that indicate their reflexivity or self-relationality. This immanent and often merely implicit reflexive self-awareness, which has naturalistic conditions and might possibly be present in elemental ways in various forms of organic life, is operative in the everyday historical life-nexus and its senses of agency and responsibility. The lived life-nexus and the human sciences, which would understand it from its own perspective, presuppose a historically situated individual self that is engaged in self-­ understanding and autobiographical self-narration. In the formation of the human sciences, as the historicization of practical philosophy, the fact of self-awareness entails a shift in viewpoints from the impersonal or external theoretical perspective of observable and explainable objects to one of self-relating, self-interpreting, participating subjects-objects who – through elementary forms of mutual understanding and self-reflection  – intersubjectively and autobiographically construct their lives and values. Whereas, by contrast, Weber and Simmel stressed the social-structural and methodological uses of interpretive understanding as a constituent of social scientific explanation, Dilthey’s interpretive understanding discloses first-person and interpersonal attitudes encompassing reflexivity (implicit and self-aware self-relations) and reflectivity (explicit and thematized self-awareness). Dilthey’s strategy is a unique contribution to the interpretive turn in late nineteenth-century thought, as it overlapped and conflicted with the interpretive sociologies of Weber and Simmel, Neo-Kantian conceptions of cultural and idiographic sciences, and the emerging phenomenological movement. What is distinctive in Dilthey’s approach in this milieu is the significance of the intersection between relational individuality and interpretive self-awareness. The point remains the pursuit of self-understanding, under altered conditions, and through interpretive inquiry rather than direct intuition (GS 19:27).

The Hermeneutics and Politics of Relational Individualism Let us further consider Dilthey’s structural individualism before turning to self-­ awareness. If individuals are constituted and formed, as all social analysis concludes, why did Dilthey maintain that the individuated relational self is both a formation of intersecting forces and an acquired center of awareness and activity that should have priority in history and the human sciences?

 On Heidegger’s reception and adaptation of Dilthey’s thought, see Bambach (1995) and Scharff (2018). 13

146

E. S. Nelson

The ostensive derivative fictionality of the person fails to remove one constituent element that individuals enact and that the collective realities, which replace it in social theory, lack: reflexive self-awareness. Collective entities such as the Volksseele, Volksgeist, and national culture and collective structures such as class, nation, race, the state, and tradition are also developmentally formed through the shifting patterns of individual interactions and can only be deemed reflexively self-­ conscious through organicist metaphor and  mystification. If they were automatically given, there would be no need to convince people of their legitimacy. They are experienced as real and effective by individuals who identify with and break with them in the historical distances and discontinuities (Abstände) criticized by Gadamer. They appear ontologically more real than individuals as ethical life and objective spirit, as they reproduce themselves through individual life without their awareness. However, their reproduction is parasitical on typically implicit individual acceptance and activity that can become explicit and reflectively and practically adjusted. Social forces are modified in individuation and through elementary forms of interpretively understanding oneself and others. These systems are historically understood, chosen, appropriated, modified, criticized by historical individuals, which are both the inquiring subjects and inquired objects of the human sciences. Individuals are the describing/described and understanding/understood, as knowledge of the human world occurs within that world (GS 1:xviii). Consequently, Dilthey’s individualism is not mere aesthetic romanticism, as individual self-­ understandings, activities, and worldviews have structurally constituent roles in the objects and subjects of the human sciences, constituting its double hermeneutic irreducible to a common natural or social structure or a collective subject. The human sciences are the self-reflexive enactment and medium of socially mediated self-relations. In addition to the hermeneutic understanding of the specificity, self-orienting, and my ownness of personal life, of being an interpretive participant in one’s own life, there is a second political dimension: the reconstruction of a minimal individual self is corelated with the modern movement from an absolutist to a constitutional state and the differentiation of an autonomous sphere of individual and human rights. In the constitutional state, Dilthey noted, the rule of law binds the state, the rulers, and the subjects (GS 24:52). This liberal state enables a diversity and richness of forms of individual self-development and – again showing that this point is not merely about negative liberty  – sharing in ruling and being ruled. Dilthey’s Humboldtian and critical individualism informed his denial, evident in his 1905 Hegel book, of the hegemonic German conception of the state as the primary agent in history and society which unifies individuals with the common good and the secularized theodicy and  teleology of history (cf. Kloppenberg, 1986, 179). It is rather the people themselves  as an interactive plurality, in their associations and networks from the family through civil society to the state, which forms common goals and values through generational conflict, consensus, and decision. Not one unitary national  spirit or Zeitgeist, but the forms and failures of co-individuation characterize a generation and its feelings, activities, and aspirational ideals. A

8  Individuation and Self-Awareness in Wilhelm Dilthey

147

historical situation is characterized by relativity, which preserves a sense of the incomparably singular and its own sense and value (GS 19:3, 6), and a weak holistic relationality, through which individuals develop or fail to develop diverse forms of personality and sociability. Historical understanding has skeptically confronted us with an “immeasurable rubble field of religious traditions, metaphysical assertions, demonstrated systems” (GS 8:76). Dilthey claimed that the sharp blade of historical relativism, which sliced apart traditional metaphysics, monarchy, and religion, can also bring about healing as philosophy makes itself its own object (234). This dimension of healing is articulated in his ethical, pedagogical, and political philosophy. In this context, by elucidating natural and social conditions outside of explicit awareness, the natural and human sciences allow a society to reflectively engage and utilize these conditions, to improve and liberally reform its practices and institutions, and to promote relational self-determination. One further step became apparent in subsequent political thought, which radicalizes Dilthey’s hermeneutical liberalism instead of condemning it (as in Lukács and Heidegger, who embraced different forms of brutal totalitarian dictatorship), as a few brief examples illustrate. First, the Austrian legal and democratic theorist Hans Kelsen, author of the 1920 Austrian Constitution, extended Dilthey’s analysis by concluding that this sense of critical relativism, with its plurality of goods and worldviews in argument with one another, formed the basis of a democratic society. Democracy signifies the political form of relativism, as it presupposes a tolerance of myriad individual forms of life, will, and value (Kelsen, 1925, 370). Second, the close connections between human plurality, a social first-person participant perspective, and anti-totalitarian elemental democracy continue to reverberate more in the pluralism of Arendt and Habermas than the communitarianism of  generation and tradition in Yorck, Heidegger, and Gadamer.

The Structural Formation of the Self and Self-Awareness According to Dilthey, life is characterized by structure, and a structure is a relational nexus (GS 19:355). His structuralism is opposed to both mechanistic and organicist models of explanation. While Dilthey’s early sympathies were for the individual-­ oriented metaphysical  pantheism of Spinoza and Schleiermacher, the mature Dilthey is – at least in the context of the natural sciences and their attitude – skeptical and  scientifically naturalistic in critiquing speculative explanatory constructs such as hylozoism, vital principles, and the world-soul as anthropomorphic and incoherent (GS 20:119) or as  useless mystifications (GS 8:50). While some of Dilthey’s contemporaries – such as, in this case, the noted geographer Carl Ritter – contended that planets, the earth, and even crystals were living organisms, Dilthey vigorously rejected such claims (GS 16:426). The world is not explicable through organic and vitalist models of the world-soul which do not adequately recognize its

148

E. S. Nelson

rich diversity of forms and operations (GS 15:337). It is instead an evolving interactive nexus of individuated beings: relational things, organisms, and selves. Individuation is a much wider question than the individual self-awareness with which it takes on a peculiar self-relational character. Systematic structural explanation – whether metaphysical, naturalistic, or social – is correct that the living individual entity emerges through the development and differentiation of a complex relational nexus. It is incorrect insofar as a living entity is not merely an expression of the whole, as in the strong organicist models that dominated German thought. Dilthey is an outright opponent of the fateful misuse of notions of organicism and organism to speak of society and the state, which he criticized in Aristotle (GS 1:229), Hegelianism, and his contemporaries. As he stated in a critique of contemporary historians, “the words ‘The state is an organism’ do not clarify matters at all” (GS 16:110). The notion of the organism pertains to internally-relating individuated biological systems, and not to externally-related common structures and collectives, and it is a physical-biological concept that does not extend to the associations and organizations of ethical life. Organisms reproduce themselves and organs function in a bodily system: they have no sense of responsibility, criticism, or reform. Moreover, according to Dilthey, categories – such as nature and species – are nominal and not themselves real substantial unitary entities. It is the specific organism that functions and lives through its own intersectional nexus of conditioned motives, adaptations, and activities and as the orientational center of its environing world. Organisms are characterized by a minimal reflexivity and orientation as they move themselves through their environments. For the personalist Dilthey, the primary difference that marks the evolution and self-experience of the human animal is its complexity and historicity. It has a feeling and sense of the differentiation of itself as a distinct subject and the world as a distinct object which are formed through the interaction of bodily, affective, and social activity and worldly facticity and resistance. A structural differentiation occurs in the pre-reflective awareness of the co-givenness of “there” and “me” in this “there-­ for-­me” (GS 19:61). Dilthey describes in a proto-phenomenological manner how the “there” of things is in me as I am with things within the “there,” as life both touches and is touched (152–153). Life is experienced immanently from within as “being-there-for-me” in a worldly and social first-person perspective in which the self actively partakes. Self-awareness emerges from natural and social conditions that lead to its specific reflexive character in the human world, such that Dilthey overcomes naturalism from within through an immanent critique of its own exaggerated claims (Nelson, 2013, 141–160). Being an individual self and having a – at least minimal – form of self-awareness are consequently correlates presupposed in the ordinary life-nexus and their empirical and interpretive human scientific investigation. The whole is not given in the life-nexus; it is complexly mediated and interpretively understood. As a consequence, metaphysical systems and overstated totalizing programs for the sciences, such as Comtean positivism and sociology, are characterized by a one-sided partiality and a lack of recognition of human finitude

8  Individuation and Self-Awareness in Wilhelm Dilthey

149

and worldly relational plurality. Neither an isolated reified subject nor object can be taken as an adequate point of departure. Rationalism, idealism, and intuitionism (the supremacy of the subject) and their naturalistic and realist opponents (the hegemony of the object) express feelings and ideas that are derived from and overlook the correlational, co-given self-world nexus operative in ordinary lived-experience. “Internal” and “external,” self and world, and so on, are only meaningful in relation to each other, as each is present in and defines the other in their correlation and differentiation (GS 19:178, 180). Hence, prefiguring in part Heidegger’s analysis in Being and Time, consciousness is aware of itself as a distinct existent in the world and the world is experienced as such in relation to a reflexively aware and individuated self.

Reflexive Self-Awareness and its Historicity Reflexive self-feeling and self-awareness, as prior to the radical separation of knower and known, are the basis of more explicit forms of consciousness in Dilthey’s analysis (GS 19:154, 171). This reflexivity is not purely self-intuiting or self-­ knowing, as there is no essential self to be intuited, and is mediated by the play of preconscious instincts and desires and by worldly forces. It is conditioned by the medium of the life-nexus and environment in which they operate (GS 18:166) and through which, in each moment, there is a reflexive feeling and experience of oneself as a bodily being and self that can initiate movement and action (175). This self is not solipsistically bound to itself in its self-reflexive moment, as it can recall and anticipate past and future situations and interpretively make the implicit explicit. It is experienced both as an effect of and as capable of interacting with its world (GS 18:177). The reflexive feeling of life and sensibility, which form the basis of consciousness (GS 19:31, 43), are, to varying degrees, directed through attention, and intensified, as exemplarily occurs in the poet, to encompass and freely embrace the world that conditions it (GS 18:166). This is not the overly strong version of holism that maintains a determinate systematic totality in which everything individual is epiphenomenal and illusory. It is a modified, weaker version of holism that relationalizes and preserves the singular in its life-nexus or relational context. Each individual, as a result, discloses a perspective on its historical world, making biography a crucial facet of historical interpretation. Whereas historicism focused on understanding peoples and eras from out of their own perspectives, Dilthey transforms this method into understanding each life in its own sense of itself. He remarked: this “sense of individual existence is entirely singular, indissoluble for conceptual knowledge, and yet it represents in its own way, like a monad of Leibniz, the historical universe” (GS 7:199). This incommensurable singularity is further described as an individual facticity, a haecceitas, which is expressed in the structure of life itself (GS 19:348). This haecceitas, the principle of individuation, does not signify a negative limit or a secret interiority; it is positive as a determinate, reflexively aware process of

150

E. S. Nelson

self-relation and self-reflective activity and engagement with others in the world (GS 1:178). Here we find another indication of the priority of the practical, since self-other relations are not primarily about the isolated asocial ego’s conceptual and theoretical grasping of the other. In contrast, to confront another misinterpretation of Dilthey, they concern practices of elementary, ordinary understanding and recognition (which encompass affective relations of empathy, sympathy, hatred, resentment, etc.) as well as cultivated and  – in history and the other human sciences – methodical forms of interpretative understanding that draw on the structures of objective spirit, or a form of life, and cannot rely on rudimentary forms of emotional identification. At the same time, the categories of life, as temporally and historically enacted, are immanent to forms of life and have an immanent purposiveness and meaningfulness. Nonetheless, they fail to provide an external, universal, a priori measure or – pace Hegel and Marx  – a hierarchical developmental and progressive order (GS 7:232–236). Thus, historicity does not refer to a stage made meaningful by an external, developmental, teleological history; it refers to the internal relations of meaning and value formed in I-thou relations and conflicts that form and typify a historical generation.  Dilthey’s sense of generation conflicts  with  Heidegger’s 1927 analysis of generation as either fallen in plurality or unified through an act of collective decision.

 onclusion: Self-Reflective Life and the Critical Vocation C of Philosophy Individual existence wants to understand itself. Reflexive self-awareness forms the basis of the varieties of self-reflection that shape human existence. Self-relationality is primary in individual life while being persistently conditioned and mediated by others (GS 19:276). Individual reflection seeks to express itself through the medium of its social-historical relativity and finiteness, such that historical liberation must be a liberation that partakes in and embraces life’s very conditionality and finitude (GS 7:288, 290), as it is compelled to interpretively and perspectivally form meaning and value in its own sense and situation. Skeptical relativism is double-edged as it contests delusions and fixations while threatening to dismantle ordinary life and the sciences. In response, Dilthey advocated for a “moderate skepticism” (GS 18:3). Analogous to Hume’s strategy in his 1748 An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, and Mill’s fallibilism, moderate skepticism and relativism that embrace practical life in its plurality are the resolution of their more radical, ultimately dogmatic theoretical forms. In conclusion, in brief, the situation of immanent finite existence entails for Dilthey the priority of relational self-reflection, which occurs in the autobiographical understanding of self and others (GS 7:247). This reflectivity shapes both the life-nexus through intentional actions and the forms of inquiry that would transcend

8  Individuation and Self-Awareness in Wilhelm Dilthey

151

it. As a result, both practical and theoretical discourses presuppose it as they critique and depart from it for the sake of more expansive universal forms of knowledge. Still, as social practices, scientific and ethical inquiry are only possible on the basis and expression of a self-reflection that seeks to clarify life about itself (GS 10:28). Conceptualization, science, and philosophy are rooted in the self-relating and hermeneutical character of human existence. Dilthey’s commitments to finitude and relativism do not entail the end of philosophy, only its totalizing metaphysical incarnations. As Dilthey argued in the 1907 work The Essence of Philosophy, philosophy is motivated by fundamental irresolvable riddles of life and persistently transformed by its own incompletion and skepticism which leaves a wake of ruins in its path. It heightens the intensification of reflexivity and the vocation of life’s critical self-reflection (GS 7:7). Dilthey depicted, for instance, Socrates and Schleiermacher, neither of whom limited thought to the confines of a system, as exemplars of philosophy as free, critical self-­ reflection in response to their conditions of life (GS 14.2:463). While philosophy expresses itself as worldview and as science, its aim is to self-reflectively and critically interpret worldviews and science for the sake of finite relational life as a whole.14

Bibliography Bambach, C. R. (1995). Heidegger, Dilthey, and the crisis of historicism. Cornell University Press. Beiser, F. C. (2014). After Hegel. Princeton University Press. de Mul, J. (2004). The tragedy of finitude: Dilthey’s hermeneutics of life. Yale University Press. Dilthey, W. (1914–2005). Gesammelte Schriften (26 Vols). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Dilthey, W. (1991–2019). Selected works (6 Vols) (R.  Makkreel & F.  Rodi, Eds.). Princeton University Press. Gadamer, H.-G. (2013). Truth and method. Bloomsbury. Gadamer, H.-G. (2016). Hermeneutics between history and philosophy: The selected writings of Hans-Georg Gadamer (Vol. 1). Bloomsbury. Hamid, N. (2021). Law and structure in Dilthey’s philosophy of history. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 29(4), 633–651. Kelsen, H. (1925). Allgemeine Staatslehre. Julius Springer. Kloppenberg, J. T. (1986). Uncertain victory: Social democracy and progressivism in European and American thought 1870–1920 (Vol. 20, p. 314). Oxford University Press. Kornberg, J. (1981). Historicism and liberalism: Wilhelm Dilthey’s philosophy of history. Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory, 5(3), 16–30. Lukács, G. (1948). Der junge Hegel. Luchterhand. Lukács, G. (1955). Die Zerstörung der Vernunft: Der Weg des Irrationalismus von Schelling zu Hitler. Aufbau Verlag. Makkreel, R. A. (1993). Dilthey: Philosopher of the human studies. Princeton University Press. Mannheim, K. (1965). Ideologie und Utopie. G. Schulte-Bulmke.

 I would like to thank Saulius Geniusas, Ronny Miron, and Nevia Dolcini for the opportunity to present earlier versions of this paper and to receive valuable questions and comments. 14

152

E. S. Nelson

Marcuse, H. (1932). Hegels Ontologie und die Grundlegung einer Theorie der Geschichtlichkeit. Klostermann. Marom, A. (2014). Universality, particularity, and potentiality: The sources of human divergence as arise from Wilhelm Dilthey’s writings. Human Studies, 37(1), 1–13. Nelson, E. S. (2007). Empiricism, facticity, and the immanence of life in Dilthey. Pli: Warwick Journal of Philosophy, 18, 108–128. Nelson, E. S. (2011). The world picture and its conflict in Dilthey and Heidegger. Humana.Mente: Journal of Philosophical Studies, 18, 19–38. Nelson, E.  S. (2013). Between nature and spirit: Naturalism and anti-naturalism in Dilthey. In A.  Giuseppe, H.  Johach, & E.  S. Nelson (Eds.), Anthropologie und Geschichte: Studien zu Wilhelm Dilthey aus Anlass seines 100. Todestages (pp. 141–160). Königshausen & Neumann. Nelson, E. S. (2017). Chinese and Buddhist philosophy in early twentieth-century German thought. Bloomsbury. Nelson, E. S. (2019). Introduction: Wilhelm Dilthey in context. In E. S. Nelson (Ed.), Interpreting Dilthey: Critical essays (pp. 1–18). Cambridge University Press. Popper, K. R. (1957). The poverty of historicism. Beacon Press. Rockmore, T. (2003). Dilthey and historical reason. Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 226(4), 477–494. Rodi, F. (2003). Das strukturierte Ganze: Studien zum Werk von Wilhelm Dilthey. Velbrück Wissenschaft. Scharff, R.  C. (2018). Heidegger becoming phenomenological: Interpreting Husserl through Dilthey, 1916–1925. Rowman & Littlefield. Troeltsch E. (1922). Der historismus und seine probleme. Mohr. von Humboldt, W. (1841–1852). Gesammelte Werke (7 Vols). G. Reimer.

Chapter 9

Ecological Self-Awareness in the Anthropocene Mintautas Gutauskas

Introduction Ecological sensitivity might be considered the Zeitgeist of the beginning of the third decade of the twenty-first century. It manifests through our attention to environmental issues, nature, and animals, and attempts to find various practices of sustainability as well as significant changes in self-awareness. We might not only talk about an ecological attitude that looks at the surrounding world from an ecological perspective, but also an ecological self-awareness that reflects on one’s own actions and thinking practices, and which even reconsiders the self through the perspective of ecological issues. And yet, what does it mean to perceive something, to think from an ecological point of view? What is characteristic of this attitude? Why is this attitude becoming increasingly about us and not only about the environment and nature today? The word “ecological” has not been limited to the traditional questions about ecology as a science concerned for a long time with the relation of the animal both to its organic and inorganic environment. Today, the word “ecological” increasingly refers to the relationship between the human and the environment. The scale of human activity has become so large that there is no longer any nature independent of humans. Nature extensively appears in its damaged state, and any human activity is evaluated from the point of view of its global consequences. It should be noted that these questions are raised in the epoch of the Anthropocene, which signifies the atmosphere of the Zeitgeist considered in terms of crisis, catastrophes, and uncontrollable consequences. Understanding which attitude, thought, consciousness, awareness, and self-awareness is ecological is not that simple. An ecological attitude manifests in many forms, ranging from simply being eco-conscious and M. Gutauskas (*) Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Geniusas (ed.), Varieties of Self-Awareness, Contributions to Phenomenology 121, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39175-0_9

153

154

M. Gutauskas

engaging in sustainable practices (people protecting the environment, not polluting it, preserving resources, and recycling waste) to the radical questioning of the self in relation to the environment. In other words, this spectrum starts from simple relationships with objects to the relationship with oneself. Questions about relationships with the environment permeate many natural and social sciences, and it would be a very extensive task to review them all. Since this chapter is grounded in phenomenology, the following question arises: what can the phenomenological perspective reveal about ecological self-awareness and human relations with the environment? Some researchers, for instance, Timothy Morton, claim that even if phenomenology provides important analytical tools, it is not sufficient for studying such “hyper-objects” as climate change and global warming. Phenomenological tools, especially provided by the approaches of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, are insufficient when exploring what transcends and is beyond our field of experience (Morton, 2013, 11–24). And yet, as Charles S.  Brown and Ted Toadvine (2003) claim, everything is rooted in experience, and this should not be depreciated. Considering the problem of relations with nature from a slightly different angle, they state: “Our conviction that nature has value, that it deserves or demands a certain proper treatment from us, must have its roots in an experience of nature” (xi). Therefore, attending to experience should not be underestimated. On the contrary, experience should be the starting point. However, it needs to be properly understood. It must be noted that if phenomenology is limited to the givenness of objects to consciousness, there cannot be much to say about global processes. In a comparable way, when looking at ecological self-awareness, there is not much we can deduce about it based on the Husserlian self-givenness of consciousness. Rather, we are dealing with a self-interpreting awareness. Hence a hermeneutic approach is essential here. The givenness of Husserlian consciousness is perhaps less important than Heidegger’s “hermeneutic intuition” (1987, 116), that is, the awareness of the hermeneutic, interpretative situation one is in. This raises the following questions: 1. What motivates the emergence of ecological self-awareness and acting eco-conscious? 2. What are the presuppositions of such approaches? 3. Which experiences determine the eco-conscious behavior and ecological self-­ awareness due to which we begin to perceive ourselves in relation to the environment and other forms of life? I will not review the different factual forms of eco-consciousness and self-­awareness whose typology and classification would require a separate study. I will instead try to capture the eidos of ecological self-awareness, that is, to distinguish what is characteristic to such self-awareness in general and what its constitutive features are. This chapter will approach the above questions by raising the hypothesis that the increase in ecological self-awareness, and the fact that it is nowadays discussed in terms of crisis, is a consequence of Western culture. Philosophical and Christian traditions, as well as modern sciences, formed a certain approach to nature, which manifested itself in its most radical form in modernity, that reduces nature to resources. This is the kind of thinking that experiences the deepest shock and which

9  Ecological Self-Awareness in the Anthropocene

155

undergoes profound transformations in the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene is not only a geological term, but also an event of self-awareness. It reveals not only new geological layers, but also a new ecological self-awareness. Therefore, in this chapter we will firstly pay attention to the most important presuppositions of modernity’s exploitative approach to nature in order to understand what kind of break occurred. We will then review the Anthropocene as an event to determine the characteristics of self-awareness in this specific epoch. Finally, we will adopt a phenomenological perspective by raising questions, for instance, about the origin of ecological self-awareness in experience. Which experiences motivate the formation of ecological self-awareness? Although I do not think that the nature of ecological self-awareness can be solely explained on the basis of a modified analysis of the way we experience our relationship with the natural environment and animals, I believe that underestimating the aspect of experience as only a psychological state of mind would be a big mistake. The experience of nature’s vulnerability, and our response and responsibility to it, form the essence of ecological self-awareness. The analysis of experience itself should help identify the motives and sources of ecological self-awareness.

From Modernity to the Anthropocene In what historical-hermeneutical situation do we think about ecological self-­ awareness? What determines the discussions about our relationship with the environment in terms of crisis and catastrophe? Why is the word “ecological” automatically associated in our minds with an atmosphere infused with concern, anxiety, loss, or even apocalypse? Referring to the current epoch as the Anthropocene indicates new attempts to explain “what is happening?”, “where have we arrived?”, “where are we going?”, and “who is to blame?” These questions are attempts to rethink and reorient our relationship with the environment and ourselves. So in which historical process do we find ourselves and what is changing in our relationship with the environment? Western culture has provided itself with a justification for the subjugation of nature for human needs since its origins. In the Bible, Adam and Noah are exceptional beings who receive animals to have at their disposal. The hierarchical relation between humans and animals is already established in the order of world creation. The ancient Greeks also formed a hierarchical relationship: the human possessed psyche, the capacity to think that determined both the order and hierarchy of life itself and its practical subordination. However, the most evident hierarchical relationship was established during the modernity of the New Age. Here, on the basis of res extensa and res cogitans, the human is distinguished from other living beings; animals and nature become mere mechanisms, automatons with which there is no ethical relation. The subjugation of nature was a project of modernity. As René Descartes (2006) asserted, the modern sciences must help humans to become “the masters and possessors of nature” (51). Nature as a powerful force must be

156

M. Gutauskas

controlled and subordinated to human needs. Modernity had its own understanding of a “harmonious” relationship with nature. As Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno (2002) ironically remark in the Dialectic of Enlightenment: “The ‘happy match’ between human understanding and the nature of things that he envisaged is a patriarchal one: the mind, conquering superstition, is to rule over disenchanted nature” (2). Disenchanted nature is no longer a mysterious and dangerous force for humans. With the help of science, knowledge, and technology, a balance of forces suitable for humans can be achieved. Martin Heidegger (1977) dramatically describes how modern sciences enabled the exploitation of nature. Gestell, as the essence of technology, creates such an attitude towards nature in which the technical revealing of nature and modern science go hand in hand. For Heidegger, modern technology works as a kind of “unconcealment” (Unverborgenheit) that subjects nature to an “enframing” (Gestell) in order to reveal it as a “standing-reserve” (Bestand), a resource to be calculated and preserved so that it rests at one’s disposition. The challenge of this enframing is to produce, out of nature, “the maximum yield at the minimum expense” (15). And it is modern mathematical physics which enables this kind of production: “Modern science’s way of representing pursues and entraps nature as a calculable coherence of forces” (21). While modern physics itself should not be identified with exploitation, it enables the enframing of nature as a standing-reserve: as a resource to be used for a maximum production which can be planned and calculated. Although Husserl (1970) claims that by accepting the natural scientific form of mathematized nature as reality, “we take for true being what is actually a method” (51), the exploitative power of technology allows us to ignore this discrepancy if the desired results meet expectations. This was again rightly observed by Horkheimer and Adorno (2006): “Enlightenment stands in the same relationship to things as the dictator to human beings. He knows them to the extent that he can manipulate them” (28). So, if we are successful enough in manipulating and exploiting things, it is possible not to delve further into what they are. Becoming aware of such an exploitative relationship was already one of the shocks which forced us to reconsider our relationship with the environment. Another aspect – reflexivity and control – is at the center of modernity. Modernity, as its name implies, is defined by its relationship with time. As Jürgen Habermas (1990) notes: “Modernity can and will no longer borrow the criteria by which it takes its orientation from the models supplied by another epoch; it has to create its normativity out of itself” (7). This is the most important feature of modernity, permeating all areas from theoretical discourses to everyday life. Modern society is described by Anthony Giddens and Christopher Pierson (1998) as living “after tradition” and “after nature” (208). Just as in the modernity of the New Age, reason refuses to obey tradition, so here, only at the everyday level, no customs can be self-evident, and activities must be based on the reflexivity of institutions and individuals. The starting point for the present activity is not the past (I think and do as my predecessors did), but the present itself and its orientation towards the future. Even the validity of tradition itself must be justified in relation to the present (for example, how much it is worth following some custom or ritual). The same attitudes apply to the environment: it is not individuals and institutions that try to adapt to the

9  Ecological Self-Awareness in the Anthropocene

157

local environment, but the contrary. The aim is to reorganize the environment so that it does not impede and remains a resource to accomplish set goals. Hence, reflexivity means that the starting point of the modern attitude is not the measures adopted from the environment and tradition, but reflection itself. As the Cartesian mind determines the criteria of truth and certainty, modern institutions through “expert systems” decide what is true and worthwhile and what must be done. Giddens (1991) associates “the end of nature” with the establishment of control and reflexivity. As he notes, “nature begins ‘to come to an end’ in the sense that the natural world is increasingly ordered according to the internally reflexive systems of modernity” (166). Therefore, the final realization of modernity is as follows: self-reflexive reason determines the principles of cognition and social order, subjugates nature to these models, and thus realizes itself through the final establishment of control. And this is where the turning point occurs. The keywords of modernity are rational social order and control, while those of the Anthropocene are crisis and unintended consequences. It turns out that modern reason did not defeat nature and become the master and possessor of it according to its imagining of itself as all-­ controlling. Humanity has truly become a powerful force which affects the entire planet. And yet, humanity “took over” the planet not through control, but through unintended consequences. And this led to changes in both the environment and self-­ awareness. It can be said that the Anthropocene marks not only a geological change, but also a shift in Zeitgeist. “What is the anthropos of the Anthropocene?” is a question constantly repeated by many theorists, indicating the search for and formation of a new self-awareness. What are its characteristics? Perhaps the most radical are the concepts of humanity as a geological force and as a species. It should be noted that these concepts completely change the hierarchy of modern human reason and nature proposed by modernity. The human of modernity discovers and defines itself through one’s own spiritual qualities: the human essence is spirit, culture, ideas, utopias, visions of a better society, and so on. This unites people to achieve common goals. However, in the Anthropocene, the human finds itself through material traces: the depletion of resources, the destruction of the environment, waste, and pollution – in other words, through all that has been pushed out of focus and made irrelevant to the human of modernity or the Enlightenment. What significance did the fact that humans leave a lot of waste have for the human self-awareness of the Enlightenment? None. But in the Anthropocene, waste becomes a factor of unintended unity without intended unification. “Anthropocene,” like modernity, is a term bound to time, but it refers to a completely different time scale. Modernity identified itself as something completely new in contrast to the old, as a radical beginning from which everything else is directed into the future. The relationship with the future was more important than the one with the past. And the history of the human of modernity (which constitutes the “narrative identity” of humanity and serves the formation of self-awareness) is a history of spirit and reason, a history of increasing awareness, freedom, and their realization in life. Yet, the Anthropocene is a whole other story: modern humans discover that they belong to another history, a deeper one which has been previously pushed out as insignificant. The measures of its time are completely different too:

158

M. Gutauskas

its beginning and end, past and future are barely conceived. It is understood that humanity as a species began to affect the environment before even beginning to record history (e.g., the impact of humanity during the Megafauna Extinction between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago). Furthermore, if the apocalyptic scenarios were to come true, the consequences caused by humanity (e.g., leftover nuclear waste) will last longer than those who are currently writing history. The history of the Anthropocene is the history of material traces, of human footprints, whose main characteristics are opposite to those of modernity, to what has been displaced or ignored by it. It is a history of geological forces and species. But what is humanity as a geological force and as a species? The understanding of humanity as a geological force arose in the debates among geologists. Human impact becomes geologically significant when it can be measured on a planetary scale as new geological formations. Those who coined the term “Anthropocene”  – Paul J.  Crutzen and Eugen F.  Stoermer (2000)  – associate the changes of the Anthropocene with how humans transform the environment or cause it to change through, for instance, urbanization, increased human population, transformed land surface due to human activity, increase in CO2 and CH4 levels in the air that leads to the “greenhouse” effect and climate warming (17). Later, Simon L. Lewis and Mark A. Maslin (2015) propose to consider the footprint caused by changes in air composition as a marker of the Anthropocene: the carbon footprint caused by industrialization or the Great Acceleration, or by nuclear dust that is found all over the world, even in the Antarctic glaciers, after nuclear tests in the 1960s (175–177). It is important to note that the determinant geological markers which testify to the inability of humans to cope with the consequences of their activities are chosen as the most significant ones. The shock factor of the Anthropocene is the accumulation of everything that seemed insignificant, and control has been lost to such an extent that it becomes impossible to realize the project of modernity. Here begins a different history of humanity in which we cannot distinguish between the history of nature and the history of humankind, without even being able to record key events. In this sense, the event of the Anthropocene is twofold. As Timothy Clark (2015) points out: The Anthropocene is itself an emergent “scale effect.” That is, at a certain, indeterminate threshold, numerous human actions, insignificant in themselves (heating a house, clearing trees, flying between the continents, forest management) come together to form a new, imponderable physical event, altering the basic ecological cycles of the planet. (72)

So if we want to understand the event of the Anthropocene, we need not only to find a point by which we can measure the significance of the event, but also to understand its scale. The event of the Anthropocene appears as an accumulation of the insignificant. This encourages telling a history of humanity where the main acting agents would not be spirit, ideas, and culture, but invisible and unexperienced geological processes which can only be recorded retrospectively and discovered only as human traces in nature. Clark’s definition of humanity as a geological force is radical:

9  Ecological Self-Awareness in the Anthropocene

159

The newly recognized agent of humanity as a geological force is something indiscernible in any of the individuals or even large groups of which it is composed. It is a power that barely recognizes itself as such and which is not really capable of voluntary action or planning, as it arises from the often unforeseen consequences of the plans and acts of its constituents. (15)

As it can be seen, the basic definitions of humanity formed in Western culture according to which the essence of the human is understood – individuality, capability of voluntary action, planning, and so on – are rejected here. A completely different starting point is chosen. The human is not defined by one’s aspirations and ideas, but by the consequences and waste which remain after human activity. Yet, the following question arises: what kind of consciousness is this? Would it be able to interpret itself as a geological force incapable of willful action and planning? What kind of self-awareness does the concept of the human as a geological force suggest? Clearly, this is not only the history of the sedimentation of geological layers. Indeed, physical facts are only one side of the story. The other side is no less important: how does humanity evaluate this activity? Here, a new “global imaginary” appears which links individual actions in a single whole that perceives the consequences as being caused by the same species and gives an ethical value to those consequences (Clark, 2015, 16). It interprets its consequences in terms of loss, crises, danger, and anxiety. It is a consciousness that “suddenly” sees something that is completely opposite to the definition of the human of modernity. This constitutes a shock of self-awareness that we record as the event of the Anthropocene not in the geological strata, but in the strata of self-awareness. We should also be careful about the content of the concept of humans as a “species.” What does humanity as a species mean? What is new in the self-awareness of the Anthropocene? It should be noted that it is precisely modernity which offered the understanding of humans as a biological species. The biological interpretation of the human (homo sapiens) stems from the natural sciences, primarily medicine and biology. So is there anything new here? What should be paid attention to here is how the story of this species is being told in a new light. A good example is the short history of humanity as a species in Elizabeth Kolbert’s (2014) The Sixth Extinction. The story begins with the emergence of a new species two hundred thousand years ago in eastern Africa. The members of the species are not particularly swift or strong or fertile. They are, however, singularly resourceful. Gradually they push into regions with different climates, different predators, and different prey. None of the usual constraints of habitat or geography seem to check them. They cross rivers, plateaus, mountain ranges. In coastal regions, they gather shellfish; farther inland, they hunt mammals. Everywhere they settle, they adapt and innovate. (Kolbert, 2014, 1)

Kolbert goes on to tell how this species has learned to use other even more powerful animals for its own purposes, how it moves and reproduces useful species as it expands across the planet, how it cuts down forests and transforms the environments to suit its own purposes. Eventually, the species becomes widespread to such an extent that it affects the climate. But what does this description of the species’ history suggest? It cannot be argued against the given description of humanity’s spread

160

M. Gutauskas

as animals, but the impression that this is the history of an invasive species that ultimately leads to the sixth extinction cannot be shaken off. Is it not the case that this sequence of events already has an ethical evaluation? Why is this history not told as a story of great achievement, but as one that leads to disaster? So what kind of self-awareness does the concept of humanity as a species offer? Discussing the changing self-awareness in light of the crisis of the Anthropocene, Dipesh Chakrabarty (2021) remains quite skeptical about our ability to experience ourselves both as geological agents and as a species. He observes: Who is the we? We humans never experience ourselves as a species. We can only intellectually comprehend or infer the existence of the human species but never experience it as such. There could be no phenomenology of us as a species. Even if we were to identify emotionally with a word like mankind, we would not know what being a species is, for in species history, humans are only an instance of the concept species as indeed would be any other life-form. (43)

Evidently, we experience ourselves not as primates – homo sapiens – but as beings united by the history being told and by collective images of identity, or, in other words, all that is more or less virtual, even if we choose geological processes or biological life as the measure of reality. However, the Anthropocene event allows us to begin to understand that we are not only telling the history of mankind, but that we belong to another deep history whose past and future are not only human. Although we do not experience ourselves as a species and consider the human species as an abstraction, we certainly experience our connection to the environment and the questions it poses. As Chakrabarty (2021) observes, “climate change poses for us a question of human collectivity” (45). Here, the most important thing is that we accept geological changes as a crisis, producing the new question of what constitutes the collective identity that brings us into one entity. Humanity begins to realize that it is not only united by ideas and common aspirations, but also by its traces: material waste, pollution, the depletion of resources, the extinction of species, climate change, and global warming. The technical revealing of the world was just one profile which seemed quite successful whilst we were able to act locally and unaware of global consequences. And yet, the awareness of the crisis encourages the awareness of other unifying forms – consequences and waste – evoking the need to take responsibility for them. It is the responsibility toward the environment, nature, animals and the responsibility for the consequences that motivate the emergence of a new ecological self-awareness.

De-centering the Human It should be noted that the increased awareness of people today to environmental issues does not mean that their relationships with the environment and themselves have fundamentally changed. We can recognize the unchanged attitude of modernity in various debates which concern, for example, stopping environmental pollution and climate change, restoring damaged landscapes and giving space for species

9  Ecological Self-Awareness in the Anthropocene

161

and habitats to regenerate, creating vast engineering projects, and reducing CO2 emissions. Sensitivity to the environment can be conditioned by a concern for resources. Such an approach does not overcome the fact that nature is enframed in a Gestell which continues to understand not only nature, but the entire planet, in terms of its exploitability. The actual breakthrough can only happen where the relationship with the environment is not technical, but ethical. This means that the environment must appear as the other, as a being that demands an ethical response. Moreover, ecological self-awareness is such that it understands itself not by separation from the natural environment, but precisely through its interconnectedness with it. Here it must be acknowledged that today’s ecological self-awareness is not calm and confident in its definition, selfhood, and actions. It is not an accident that we talk about the exploitation of the environment, nature, and animals in terms of crisis, destruction, violence, and killing. In one way or the other, the increased scale of ecological catastrophes and threatening natural elements force us to reconsider our relationship with the environment. Yet, no less significant are the changes in theoretical debates which to a large extent determine today’s ecological ­ self-awareness. The criticisms of anthropocentrism and human exceptionalism open a deeply rooted exploitative approach that subordinates nature and animals to human needs. It manifests itself not only in visible actions (the reorganization and control of the environment), but also in cognition, and even in how humans define their essence. Giorgio Agamben (2004) proposes the concept of the “anthropological machine” (33) and shows how the essence of humanity is produced at the expense of animality. Through the structure of “exclusion-inclusion,” the anthropological machine separates humanness and animality in the human, dividing life into vegetative, animal, and human parts before reuniting them in a hierarchical relationship. The vegetative and animal parts are separated from the human essence without determining its definition, thus remaining inclusive, subordinate, and isolated as the “bare life” which ensures the existence of a living being. The anthropological machine makes it possible to value or devalue the lives of the living as valuable or worthless, separating a human life worth living from an animal life that is not worth living. In its bloodiest form, this machine appeared in Nazi Germany where lives deemed not worth living – the disabled, the insane, Jews, and so on – were simply destroyed or used for medical research. This structure is universal and functions successfully even today where it is necessary to decide, for instance, how much and to what extent living beings can be used in laboratories, the food industry, or entertainment. It is the criticism of the exploitation of life (whose original motives were the fight against the humiliation of human dignity) that led to the realization that Western thinking, especially of modernity, maintains an exploitative relationship with all forms of life. For modernity, humans were unexploitable to the extent that they possessed a human essence and were thereby separable from animals. Insofar as they reach their human essence, only humans have dignity and can be an end to themselves; whereas animals, as living mechanisms and non-thinking beings, can only be a means to an end.

162

M. Gutauskas

Against this model, animal rights activists and critics of anthropocentrism question both this subordination and this mechanism of human exceptionalism. In the second half of the twentieth century, Peter Singer’s “animal liberation” (1975) began to resist this mechanism both on theoretical and practical levels. The criticism of speciesism questions human exceptionalism and the validity of using animals and nature for human purposes. If Jeremy Bentham’s question – “can they suffer?” – is answered affirmatively, it is no longer possible to exploit animals and the environment only as materials and resources. Perhaps the most radical development of Bentham’s question was Jacques Derrida’s attempts to fundamentally change the question of the animal. While staging a rather strange situation with his cat in the bath, Derrida (2008) asks himself, “just to see, who I am–who I am (following) at the moment when, caught naked, in silence, by the gaze of an animal, for example, the eyes of a cat?” (3–4). Derrida tries to radically de-center the human subject. And his animal cat should become that point of view, the kind of instance that should enable the definition of human essence, based on a biocentric point of view in the presence of the other, the “absolutely other.” The human self should be established in an encounter with the other. To what extent it is even possible, and how to stop the violence of the human attitude to animals, would require a separate study. What is significant for us is not only to question human exceptionalism and the validity of the exploitative relationship, but also the very essence of the human. This requires the human to define itself through a relationship with the other. Significantly for ecological self-awareness, the other – animals, nature, environment – is given the status of questioning and de-centering the human self. Modernity has defined humans by separating them from and contrasting with animals, while contemporary ecological self-awareness primarily recognizes the commonality between the two and raises questions about how their appropriate relationship should look. As Toadvine (2007) assesses in terms of the questions raised by the criticism of the anthropological machine: “the human as such must be reconceived as neither opposed to nor reducible to the animal. This might also suggest another deeper notion of ‘humanism’” (41). On the one hand, the human should not be understood as something fundamentally different, with all the resulting biopolitical consequences. On the other hand, humans should not be reduced to animals, meaning that the difference between the human and the animal cannot be completely erased. Although Toadvine does not elaborate on the idea of what a new humanism might be, leaving the word in quotation marks, the question of a different but still human approach is important. Today’s criticism of posthumanism equates humanism with the ideology of human exceptionalism and tends to reject humanism as a compromised thing, postponing the question of valuing or devaluing life, assuming that all forms of life are valuable in one way or the other. Evidently, such a humanism that considers the human as the central problem and the most significant concern cannot continue; however, as we will see later, the question of human responsibility towards the environment does not allow us to reject it. On the contrary, it forces us to return to it. Maybe we could think about a “de-centered humanism” here in which the commonality of human life with animal life is found and animals are “given a voice.” And yet, what does it mean to allow oneself to be

9  Ecological Self-Awareness in the Anthropocene

163

de-centered, to allow something to be said about the human? After all, animals, and even more so the environment, do not speak the human language, nor do they provide a definition of humans or directly offer alternatives for a suitable relationship with the environment. So what significance does this have for ecological self-­ awareness if it is not merely an abstract philosophical construct? Rather, the aim here is to adopt an attitude of openness in which the essence of the human would not be defined only by the human who turns to itself and only cares about itself. “Allowing animals to say something about humans” means understanding ourselves through our relationships with them. This means that the human essence is enabled only through the encounter with the environment. This strongly destabilizes the question of essence, and maybe even, in general, the problem of essence itself. Defining an essence has become so complicated that today it is hardly possible to consider it by means of how it was done not only during the Enlightenment, but even by how Max Scheler, Heidegger, and Eugen Fink attempted to think of the human. This is because the responsibility towards animals and the environment is the responsibility to their immeasurable diversity. So here we should rather focus not so much on universal concepts, but on experiences that motivate us to be open and to act responsibly. Interactions between humans and the environment can take on extremely diverse forms of address, response, and responsibility. Not only global shifts in theoretical discussions are significant, but also very specific experiences.

Nature’s Vulnerability and Human Responsibility Here we should return to the observation that “our conviction that nature has value, that it deserves or demands a certain proper treatment from us, must have its roots in an experience of nature” (Brown & Toadvine, 2003, xi). Considering an eco-­ phenomenological perspective about what motivates a certain responsible relationship with the environment, Edward S.  Casey (2003) states: “An ethics of the environment must begin with the sheer and simple fact of being struck by something wrong happening in the surrounding world” (187). As an example, Casey describes his experience when he “hiked up Cottonwood Canyon in the Crazy Mountains in central Montana” and saw deforested land (199). According to him, “the clear-cut mountain slope was like a festering wound; it was a scene of concentrated affliction.” As he continues: Whatever the profitability of the situation may be in the eye of a logging company executive, there was undeniable disfigurement in the land: the aesthetic join forces with the ethical in this scene of destruction. My glance was drawn into the heart of its darkness. This is the moment of pain that calls for alleviation by the appropriate action. On the other hand, the same symptomatic suffering brings with it a profound puzzlement: Why this depredation? Why here? Why now? In pursuing this puzzlement, I look to the larger picture. I become an ecoanalyst who wonders about the genealogy of the situation  – not just its causes but also its reasons. I consider history, social and political forces, and metaphysics. (Metaphysics, if Heidegger is right that the Age of Technology is a certain era of Western metaphysical thought in which the earth has come to be regarded as “standing reserve” in a

164

M. Gutauskas

massive enframing action that regards the earth as nothing but a resource to be exploited.) In this second moment, I move away from the apperception of the immediate environmental trauma; I undertake reflection and other cognitive and judgmental operations: my glance, which has catalyzed the entire experience, no longer suffices. The lambent lightness of the glance, combined with its compelling disclosure, here gives rise to the spirit of gravity. An environmental imperative has precipitated reflective and responsible ecoanalysis, and perhaps also […] effective political action. (200)

Casey’s example points to several important moments of experience central to eco-­ conscious behavior and ecological self-awareness. First, the most significant motive for ecological self-awareness is not just any experience of encountering the environment, but the experience of a damaged environment, the experience of vulnerability. The environment appears here not as a landscape that is noticeable and observed, but as the other that is compelling and demanding. Although the environment appears as the other, it is not simply an intersubjective relation. It is a relationship with many subjects and their living environments, which, as such, also acquire the status entities that require an ethical response. Second, such an experience is, on the one hand, spontaneous and experienced directly in the face of a shocking situation. On the other hand, this is a complex experience. It requires not only a spontaneous response and empathy, but also a certain awareness that ultimately leads to reflection and self-awareness. This is significant for understanding the experience of the Anthropocene, for understanding one’s own or other individuals’ actions in the wider context of global events. These aspects should be discussed in more depth. Why is the experience of damaged nature so significant for our ecological self-­ awareness? As Casey claims: A pleasant and healthy landscape lacks intensity; it lulls us into the pleasure of the beautiful. Only when a landscape is sublime does tension arise. […] In an environmental trauma, a different but equally powerful tension between integrity and disturbance arises: a tension whose intensity calls us to act and not just to spectate. […] The imperative for ecological action stemmed from the intensity of the scene itself, its damaged surfaces speaking dramatically to my bare apperception: whole groves of trees had lost their rightful place in an aboriginal biotic lifeworld. (199)

In a state of peacefulness, we are not disturbed by the other; they are easily reduced to our usual experiences. Maybe that is why some people do not mind animals locked up in zoos where they suffer passively and silently. Because the view is calm and the environment is idyllic, the zoo appears to some people to be a good place for entertainment or even education. Here is another example: driving through an agricultural landscape, we can admire cultivated fields. It is especially beautiful in the spring when the blooming rapeseeds and their yellow fields cover the entire landscape or contrast pleasantly with the bright green cereal crops. But for someone who knows a little more about nature, this image is not that beautiful. Such cultivated fields signal the decay of biodiversity as monoculture dominates. Although the landscape appears on the surface to be a beautiful combination of colors, it signals the decay of life in essence. But such awareness requires knowledge and is certainly not awakened as strongly as a cutdown forest. Hence, only the apparent shock of the other appearing as suffering and violated awakens an ethical response

9  Ecological Self-Awareness in the Anthropocene

165

and demands something to be done. It is this kind of experience – when I am affected by the suffering other  – that we can consider the origin of ecological self-awareness. However, it is important to note that although the concept of otherness is used in relation to nature or the environment, which appears as a suffering or damaged other, the environment itself is not a simple entity of otherness. Casey thinks Emmanuel Levinas’ concept of the face can be extended to even include the natural landscape. The landscape is expressive: it appears in its significance as having the status of an other subject (Casey, 2003, 209). But here one should not think that the relationship with the landscape is intersubjective, that a “pairing,” in the Husserlian sense, is possible. A landscape is a “place-world” inhabited by many subjects, so it is not just the other subject or person. This complicates the experience and new questions arise: whose appeal, whose suffering is being responded to when many life forms are affected in a damaged landscape? Casey’s own immediate environmental trauma leads him to become an “ecoanalyst.” Therefore, if responsible behavior is desired, we must consider not only one subject, but the entire environment, expanding both geographical and temporal dimensions to understand the specificity of the experienced situation. A concrete, cutdown forest requires dimensions of social and political forces, history, and metaphysics. If one asks for what reasons it was done and how it relates to us, this requires an understanding of our own historical situation, global processes, and the possibilities for local and global response and action. Continuing with Casey’s considerations, we can see that encountering a damaged environment in one way or another awakens questions of humanity and human collectivity. The vulnerability of the natural environment can take many forms, not only as a cutdown forest or a polluted landscape, but also as animals suffering in a devastated or polluted environment. What do we experience when we encounter birds, mammals, crustaceans and insects, dead fish, and contaminated plants stuck in oil spills on the seashore? What do we experience when we encounter seals and turtles entangled in nets on the beach, or a bird stuck in a plastic bag? Animals covered in oil or entangled in plastic show that the waste of human activity not only pollutes, but also kills other living beings and destroys their environment. The animal’s inability to escape, its suffering, strikes one as an appeal to do something. Traces of harmful human activity motivate us not only to respond personally to the appeal of the animal, but also direct us back to humankind. Here I experience that people have left waste and polluted the environment. Someone else threw the trash, but here I am, standing in front of the damaged environment. I realize that the damage was caused by none other than people. Someone else did the wasteful action, the pollution or garbage is not mine, but I, as a human being, become the polluter’s accomplice. If we find a bird entangled in the tree branches, we feel pity, but that is the life of nature. And yet, if we find an animal entangled in plastic, although that is also its fate, I accept it as a human fault in which I am complicit. By freeing the animal from the branches around it, I am happy that I took part in making its natural life a little easier. By freeing it from plastic, I can only feel reserved happiness that I have compensated a little for the damage caused by human pollution. A discarded

166

M. Gutauskas

plastic bag or other waste (or activity) that kills animals or destroys the environment is a trace of humans as a geological force. I understand and experience rescuing an entangled animal not only as a struggle for the animal’s life, but also as a struggle against the effects of geological forces. And here I am – no longer acting as a geological force, but as a responsible and self-aware human, responsible to the environment, nature, and animals. Being responsible for the consequences caused by humans, I try to help a concrete animal by freeing it, to help the environment by collecting garbage and cleaning polluted coasts. This moment points to an emerging new self-awareness. So when we talk about the new self-awareness of humanity as a species or geological force and ask what else unites us, it is important to understand that it is not only the material consequences that unite us, but also the self-­ awareness of being the culprit. The fact that environmental issues are discussed in an atmosphere of guilt and responsibility shows that the question of humanism has not disappeared  – it has only transformed. Could a geological force or species feel guilty for the consequences of its actions? The sense of guilt and responsibility of the de-centered human could be the basis of a new humanity. On the other hand, we can raise the question of how justified such an experience is. Is this responsibility not too much for a single individual to take on? How much could such a responsibility cover? Is this exclusive responsibility for planetary-scale processes not just another variation of human exceptionalism? Explaining the structures of responsibility and raising the question about the scope of responsibility, Paul Ricoeur (2000) considers: [...] how far in space and time does the responsibility for our acts extend? […] How far does the chain of harmful effects of our acts extend that we can take as still implied in the principle, the beginning, the initium for which a subject is held to be the author? A partial response is contained in the consideration of the extension of those powers exercised by human beings on other human beings and on their common environment. Stated in terms of its scope, responsibility extends as far as our powers do in space and time. […] In other words, our responsibility for harm done extends as far as does our capacity to do harm. (29–30)

Therefore, our responsibility as authors of actions seems to extend as far as we can act in time and space. And yet my responsibility as a human seems quite small. Thinking about the human powers to do something, I certainly could not take responsibility for primitive humans’ extermination of the Megafauna or for the nuclear waste that will remain a problem far beyond the lives of my children’s children. I, as a human, cannot control or influence such things in any significant way. This is where a very specific responsibility of the Anthropocene epoch appears. The responsibility of the human of modernity is limited to the area in which one can rule and control one’s actions. First, this includes the area of individual actions and the area of activities controlled by communities and states. Here, the responsibility is clearly understood. Hence, it is quite understandable that when we realize the power to make an impact on the planetary scale, we also realize the need to agree on global controls to manage the effects of human activities. Our efforts to stop climate change and global warming by taking global control continue the agenda of modernity. If countries agreed on reducing pollution by creating huge geoengineering projects, it

9  Ecological Self-Awareness in the Anthropocene

167

could have a global impact on the climate, not only by reducing the damage, but also compensating for it. Hope is present here. But even more frustrating is the non-­ compliance with climate change agreements, the fact that everything is moving too slowly, and that new wars keep delaying actions as economic, political, and human welfare issues always come before the environment. Maybe that is why Bruno Latour (2017) claims that “ecology drives people crazy” (13), because we find ourselves in a situation where the actions we need to take should have been taken yesterday or even earlier. And now we are dealing with the consequences which we cannot control. The more we demand control of the situation, the more disappointed we become as human power to do harm is much greater than our ability to deal with the consequences. However, the inability to cope with these consequences does not exempt us from responsibility as the power to do or cause harm remains the same. This establishes a human condition in which humans are defined not by their power to plan and control, but by their inability to deal with harm. It is a heavy responsibility to carry since the faults are often so obvious, and the power to undo the damage so small. Given such a sense of disempowerment, perhaps the biggest task of today’s ecological self-awareness is how not to paralyze thinking? If global control is hardly possible, knowing it will constantly encounter disturbances, then how can we maintain an appropriate relationship with the environment? It is important to understand the relationship between personal experience and responsibility. Latour (2017, 29) and Donna Haraway (2016, 46) both emphasize that responsibility as a condition requires “response-ability.” We have to be capable of responding: to see the environment not as a resource for one’s own purposes, but as the other which requires a response. It must motivate action. This requires sensitivity to the environment, preparedness for its effects on us. The encounter with and the appeal of the other is not guaranteed. After all, it is possible not to notice the damaged environment, to walk along the littered coast and resent the mess that prevents one from enjoying the landscape. Significantly, the experience of vulnerability is not always guaranteed; it may not occur, and the damaged landscape may not be noticed as its violation cannot always be immediately identified. Of course, what kinds of coexistence practices are possible, what kinds of multispecies kin we could make, how we could live, in Haraway’s (2016) words, by “staying with the trouble” amidst “chthonic” beings, would be a separate topic. This is not only a theoretical but also a practical task. Perhaps the greatest difficulty of today’s ecological self-awareness is determined by the fact that we constantly have to think on several scales and remain sensitive and capable of response. This is not easy psychologically (psychologists are talking more and more about ecological anxiety, which often inclines us to forget or push ecological issues to the side). We must commit or be sensitive not only to single subjects, but also to complex structures, environments with great diversity, and we must learn to measure our actions from both local and global perspectives. For instance, individual actions may appear quite good locally, but not globally. I collect garbage and throw it in the trashcan so as not to pollute the environment. But if I do not recycle my waste, I am still contributing to global pollution. One can also

168

M. Gutauskas

imagine environmental management campaigns as noble acts in which, for example, groups of volunteers collect garbage from the environment and take it to landfills. However, if garbage is not sorted, it becomes nothing more than the multiplication of waste. We need to expand the scope of time and space and learn to evaluate our actions and choices in terms of their environmental consequences on a global scale. The Zero Waste movement is a good example of a new self-awareness that measures every individual action on a global scale (see Gutauskas [2023]). It is necessary to ask in a different way: not how to fix the environment, but to ask about complex solutions. It might be necessary to immediately reduce consumption, to foresee possible strategies for secondary use, recycling, or at least the harmful disposal of unnecessary objects and things. And often the choices are not clear or guaranteed. The neutralization of pollution has a fairly clear perspective. However, when we talk about the restoration of the natural environment, we face even greater challenges. For instance, when you are sad that a forest has been cut down, you can join volunteer groups to replant the forest; but here we have to choose, to make decisions about how and which forest to replant, to ask whether monoculture will be replanted here (which may be cut down again as a source of wood in the future). Will the forest be replanted in such a way that the biodiversity that was destroyed will be able to flourish? If the latter is not possible, then what compromise and with whom (which life forms) must it be recreated? These are complex questions. Here, we are left with uncertainty in the area of control, with the guilt of consequences, and with an openness lacking the right answer to choose the appropriate options for the proper relationship with the environment.

Conclusion Ecological self-awareness is characterized by perceiving itself in a new way through relations with the environment. Earlier forms of self-awareness in Western culture saw the human understanding itself through its difference from animals, the hierarchical relationship between humanness and animality, which to some extent still continues. This was also the basis for human exceptionalism and a technical relationship with the environment. In today’s ecological self-awareness, this hierarchical relationship no longer has an ontological foundation. The only exceptional thing is that humans take responsibility and blame for existing consequences. Ecological self-awareness understands itself through a responsibility towards the environment, nature, animals, and for the consequences of human activities. The fact of considering the ecological issues in terms of crisis, catastrophes, failure, and extinction – and the fact that humanity is understood as a geological force and a species – are certainly motivated by physical changes, such as climate change, global warming, the extinction of species, and environmental pollution. These changes motivate us to focus on the material side of processes and to discover ourselves as active agents participating in physical nature. We begin to treat ourselves as participants in a deep history which began even before history itself. The

9  Ecological Self-Awareness in the Anthropocene

169

consequences of our actions will continue into such an uncertain future that will surpass centuries of generational history. But if we ask what motivates this understanding, and what its presuppositions are, we see that finding oneself in a particular relationship between responsibility and the material consequences of activity is motivated by the failure of modernity, the collapse of total control, the inability to cope with the consequences of human activity, and the changing status of nature and animals (from resources to the other). We can only hypothesize that it is precisely the failure of modernity that forces us to choose definitions of the human opposed to modernity, the principles of which are not reason and culture, but materiality and material consequences. And yet, as we have seen, this attitude stems from a sense of responsibility and guilt. Global responsibility cannot be realized from the perspective of modernity as global control, but it is realized in the Anthropocene, that is, within the blame for the damage done. This makes ecological self-awareness restless, sensitive, and with little hope because the power to cause damage is far greater than the power to compensate for or stop it. This, of course, also has a psychological layer. Psychologists are already aware of ecological anxiety. However, this anxiety should not be treated as a side effect of our activities (which we would like to miraculously cure, both medically and symbolically), but as a thing enabling transformation. Only by being concerned about the environment, by experiencing its vulnerability, can we change ourselves. When we ask about the experience that motivates the emergence of eco-­ conscious behavior and ecological self-awareness, we see that the most significant thing here is the experience of vulnerability. In this way, nature and animals appear as an appeal, as the other demanding a response. This motivates us to respond and act responsibly. Therefore, ecological self-awareness raises the task of reconsidering all human perceptions and actions within the perspective of relations with the environment, nature, and animals.

Bibliography Agamben, G. (2004). The open: Man and animal (K. Attell, Trans.). Stanford University Press. Brown, C. S., & Toadvine, T. (2003). Eco-phenomenology: An introduction. In C. S. Brown & T. Toadvine (Eds.), Eco-phenomenology: Back to the earth itself (pp. ix–xxi). State University of New York Press. Casey, E.  S. (2003). Taking a glance at the environment: Preliminary thoughts on a promising topic. In C.  S. Brown & T.  Toadvine (Eds.), Eco-phenomenology: Back to the earth itself (pp. 187–210). State University of New York Press. Chakrabarty, D. (2021). The climate of history in a planetary age. University of Chicago Press. Crutzen, P. J., & Stoermer, E. F. (2000). The anthropocene. Global Change News Letter, 41, 17–18. Derrida, J. (2008). The animal that therefore I am (D. Wills, Trans.). Fordham University Press. Descartes, R. (2006). A discourse on the method of correctly conducting one’s reason and seeking truth in the sciences (I. Maclean, Trans.). Oxford University Press. Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age. Polity Press.

170

M. Gutauskas

Giddens, A., & Pierson, C. (1998). Conversations with Anthony Giddens: Making sense of modernity. Polity Press. Gutauskas, M. (2023). Phenomenology of waste in the Anthropocene. In S.  E. Wilmer & A. Žukauskaitė (Eds.), Life in Posthuman condition. Critical responses to the Anthropocene (pp. 71–86). Edinburgh University Press. Habermas, J. (1990). The philosophical discourse of modernity: Twelve lectures (F.  Lawrence, Trans.). Polity Press. Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the trouble. Durham University Press. Heidegger, M. (1977). The question concerning technology. In The question concerning technology and other essays (W. Lovitt, Trans.). Garland Publishing. Heidegger, M. (1987). Zur Bestimmung der Philosophie. In Vol. 56/57 of Gesamtausgabe. Vittorio Klostermann. Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T. W. (2002). Dialectic of enlightenment: Philosophical fragments (E. Jephcott, Trans.). Stanford University Press. Husserl, E. (1970). The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology: An introduction to phenomenological philosophy (D. Carr, Trans.). Northwestern University Press. Kolbert, E. (2014). The sixth extinction: An unnatural history. Henry Holt and Company. Latour, B. (2017). Facing Gaia: Eight lectures on the new climatic regime (C.  Porter, Trans.). Polity Press. Lewis, S.  L., & Maslin, M.  A. (2015). Defining the Anthropocene. Nature, 519(March 12), 171–180. Morton, T. (2013). Hyperobjects: Philosophy and ecology after the end of the world. University of Minnesota Press. Ricoeur, P. (2000). The just (D. Pellauer, Trans.). University of Chicago Press. Singer, P. (1975). Animal liberation. Harper Collins Publishers. Toadvine, T. (2007). How not to be a jellyfish: Human exceptionalism and the ontology of reflection. In C. Painter & C. Lotz (Eds.), Phenomenology and the non-human animal: At the limits of experience. Springer.

Part IV

Comparative Philosophy of Self-Awareness

Chapter 10

Self-Awareness in Nishida as Auto-­Realization qua Determination of the Indeterminate John W. M. Krummel

Introduction While acknowledging the need to divide Nishida Kitarō’s (西田幾多郎) (1870–1945) oeuvre into periods, many commentators have claimed that there is nevertheless the common thread of “self-awareness” or jikaku (自覚) running through his works. While known as the founder of the so-called “Kyoto School” (Kyotogakuha, 京都学派) in modern Japanese philosophy, Nishida’s distinction as a post-Kantian thinker was having plumbed the depths of self-awareness to its abyssal unground in an attempt to clarify the ground of critical philosophy (NKZ 4:292).1 The sinograph for “awareness” (kaku, 覚) implies a sense of “awakening” to the real, or “realization.” It thus has the same double sense, for Nishida, as the English “realization”: becoming-aware and making-real. Keeping this in mind, self-­ awareness in Nishida involves the process of realizing the reality grounding one’s self and the world it makes-real. What about the “self” (ji, 自)? Nishida does not limit his understanding of the prefix ji (“self”) in jikaku to its egological or personal sense. James Heisig (2001, 50), for example, suggests that it also can be understood as something occurring of itself, naturally, so that “self-awareness” is that which occurs spontaneously, without external interference. Thus, the translation of jikaku to avoid is “self-consciousness” for its psychological and ego-logical connotations which would limit its meaning. For self-consciousness there is a distinct Japanese term, jiko ishiki (自己意識), which has been the standard Japanese translation of

 All references to Nishida’s works will be from his Collected Works (Nishida Kitarō Zenshū) cited in the text as NKZ, followed by the volume and page numbers.

1

J. W. M. Krummel (*) Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Geniusas (ed.), Varieties of Self-Awareness, Contributions to Phenomenology 121, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39175-0_10

173

174

J. W. M. Krummel

Selbstbewußtsein and from which Nishida himself came to articulate the distinction of self-awareness. Relevant to this also is Nishida’s association of self-awareness with the act of “mirroring” or “reflection.” He speaks of reflection both, metaphorically, in the optical sense of mirroring (写す, 映す) and in the sense of the mental act of self-­ examination (反省する). John Maraldo’s (2017, 323) claim that the “self” (自) in “self-awareness” is best read as a reflexive expression – like sich in German reflexive verbs indicating that the actor and recipient in the act are the same – is therefore convincing. Odagiri Takushi (2008, 75) (小田桐拓志) has also argued that jikaku implies a logical self-reflexive structure underlying any psychological self-­reflection. We find that self-awareness for Nishida is inherently reflexive or self-mirroring and that this is an intrinsic feature of experience in general as implicit of broader contexts, inclusive of both what becomes explicitly reflected upon and the pre-reflective context. Self-awareness reflects the process of auto-realization that objectifies and articulates a broader pre-objective context even as it inevitably fails to exhaust the whole of that context which remains unarticulated. It entails a pre-subjective dynamic in which our individual egos are participants. The auto thus refers to reality as in itself inexhaustible, undefined, indeterminate. For Nishida, this is the groundless abyss that un/grounds our world with contingency and which he designates as the nothing or mu (無). This is what makes Nishida’s conception of self-­ awareness distinctive: he links to it, as its implicit and necessary premise, the indeterminate or infinite – in Nishida’s terms the “absolute nothing” (zettai mu, 絶 対無) – and its determination. This determination of the indeterminate or finitization of the infinite2 in self-awareness, however, is also its realization qua indeterminate or infinite. To show this he makes use of Josiah Royce’s (1855–1916) notion of a self-representative system as well as the mathematical theory of infinite systems found in Richard Dedekind (1831–1916). Towards the end of the paper I will also link this to Kurt Gödel’s (1906–1978) Incompleteness Theorems to compare Nishida’s notion of self-awareness with Gödel’s notion of the incompleteness of formal systems. Nishida’s concept of self-awareness, while rooted in the Japanese Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition, cannot be understood apart from his confrontation with concepts found in Western philosophy, such as Descartes’ cogito, Kant’s Apperzeption, and Fichte’s Tathandlung, as well as in Husserl’s phenomenology.3 His logic of self-­ awareness is not some special Oriental or Japanese logic. Nishida states: “I am not saying that there are two kinds of logic, Western logic and Eastern logic. Logic must be one” (NKZ 12:289). In the following I will discuss how Nishida develops his understanding of “self-awareness,” roughly following the chronology of his oeuvre

 The Japanese term here is mugen (無限), which has the senses of both the infinite and the indeterminate, as well as the endless. 3  On this see Kobayashi (2004, 179). 2

10  Self-Awareness in Nishida as Auto-Realization qua Determination…

175

and focusing on the major themes of each period. I will then conclude by discussing what Nishida means by the “nothing” (mu) or the “indeterminate” (mugen, 無限) assumed in self-awareness, comparing it with Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems.

Pure Experience Regardless of how one might divide Nishida’s oeuvre, most agree that in the first period Nishida’s main concern was with what he called “pure experience” (純粋経 験), by which he meant the concrete whole of reality-cum-experience prior to subject/object bifurcation in cognition. This was the subject of Nishida’s first book, Inquiry into the Good (『善の研究』) of 1911. One could say that pure experience here is the forerunner of the idea of self-awareness in Nishida. Nishida defines it as follows: “To ‘experience’ means to know facts just as they are. It is to know in accordance with facts, without any contribution of oneself. ‘Pure’ describes the state of true experience as such […] without adding the least discriminating thought” (NKZ 1:9). He also explains that “pure” refers to “the strict unity of concrete consciousness,” which in its originary nature is not a complex of elements. He gives the example of the sight of a running horse (走る馬) before we formulate the proposition, “a horse is running” (「馬が走る」). In its immediate experience, our intuition is a unitary fact, even before we separate our self as the perceiving subject from its object. Only secondarily do we divide the experience analytically into the logical subject, “a horse” (馬), and the predicate, “is running” (が走る) (18), and reflectively notice our own separation from the running horse as a subject experiencing the object. Taking pure experience to precede any abstraction, analysis, or differentiation, Nishida also states, “it is not that experience exists because there is an individual, but that an individual exists because there is experience […]. Experience is more fundamental than individual differences” (4). This is before Nishida takes up “self-awareness” thematically, but one could say that the dynamism of self-awareness that Nishida will unfold in subsequent works is already implicit here. In fact, although the theme of this text was “pure experience” rather than “self-awareness,” Ueda Shizuteru (上田閑照) (1926–2019) notices in Nishida’s first book three dimensions of awareness already implied in the three stages he recognizes of pure experience: (1) pure experience as an initial and simple pre-­reflective awakening (覚) in which words and things  – both pronounced koto in native Japanese but given differing Sinographs (言 and 事) – are united; (2) pure experience as self-awakening (自覚), as it begins to reflect upon and articulate itself conceptually, indicating its dynamic self-unfolding, whereby awareness of others is also self-awareness; and (3) pure experience as understanding of self and world (自 己/世界理解), philosophically articulating itself as the “sole reality,” reflecting the fact that it is the principle whereby everything can be explained (Ueda, 1991, 249–257). This sets the task for Nishida’s later works: the explication of self-­ awareness as the self-articulation of a primal reality.

176

J. W. M. Krummel

Intuition, Reflection, Volition After his first book expounded his notion of “pure experience,” Nishida struggled with how experience becomes articulated into determinate terms and objects. How does reflection after the fact arise from that immediate experience? This question leads him to inquire into self-awareness to clarify the reflective self-realization of that pure experience. In his “On the Claims of the Pure Logicist School of Epistemology” (「認識論に於ける純論理派の主張に就て」) of 1911, he proposed that thought is a logical development of experience (NKZ 1:232–233). His 1912 essay, “Understanding Logic and Understanding Mathematics” (「論理の理 解と数理の理解」) (250–267), expands this by referring to Royce’s idea of a “self-representative system” (appearing in the “Supplementary Essays” of Royce’s Gifford Lectures, The World and the Individual), to exemplify self-awareness as it operates through “self-imaging” (自己写像, Selbst-abbilden).4 These musings come to fruition in his Intuition and Reflection in Self-Awareness (『自覚に於ける 直観と反省』) (NKZ 2) of 1917, which thematizes “self-awareness.” Nishida identifies the will (意志) as the source of self-awareness that unfolds internally to image or mirror, and to objectify, its unfolding whole. Reflection as thought here is identified with reflexion in the sense of mirroring. Self-awareness as the will’s self-­ mirroring unfolds from its undifferentiated intuition (直観) of immediate experience to its self-differentiating reflections (反省) articulating that experience, re-constructing it in the dichotomized terms of an epistemological subject and object or a grammatical subject and predicate. The process is ongoing because as intuition leads to reflection, each reflection becomes the intuited content for further reflection. Following this line of thought, Nishida grasps the source of the entire dynamism of self-reflection that is reflexive, its free creativity, ontologically in terms of the “absolute will” (絶対意志) as the a priori for all modes of intentionality – e.g., thinking, seeing, acting – and their respective objects (NKZ 2:281–283, 289–290, 311–312). The final sections of Intuition and Reflection in Self-Awareness present the will as this primal “act of all acts” or, in Fichtean terms, the Tathandlung (“fact-act”) of consciousness. Accordingly, judgment (propositional thought) is the will’s self-awareness mirroring itself. Due to its self-reflexivity, this process is self-differentiating.5 Nishida was influenced here by Hegel as well as Fichte, but relevant to our concern is his inspiration from Royce’s notion of the self-representative system. Royce (1912, 504–507) maintains that because the image of one’s mind is an item within the mind, the image includes itself, that is, an image that includes an image that includes an image, and so on ad infinitum.6 By a self-representative system Royce means such a “system that can be exactly represented or imaged, element for element, by one of its own constituent parts” (512). Royce illustrates this with the image of a perfect  On this see Maraldo (2017, 277).  Odagiri also makes this claim in Odagiri (2008, 76). 6  See also Rucker (1982, 40–41). 4 5

10  Self-Awareness in Nishida as Auto-Realization qua Determination…

177

map that includes a depiction of itself (Nishida, NKZ 2:16). A complete current map of the area in which one finds oneself as one draws the map would depict that area in every detail, including the very map one is drawing and one’s act of drawing it – depicting the map depicting the area, and so on ad infinitum (Royce, 1912, 503–506). The image will contain a smaller replica of itself with every detail, including a replica of its replica and so on. Nishida found this analogous to his own understanding of the self-reflexive nature of self-awareness. Both the subject-term of reflection and its object emerge as products of a dynamic whole of self-mirroring self-­ determination that enfolds an infinity of possibilities in its unfolding. Royce’s self-­ representative system was inspired by the German mathematician Richard Dedekind’s definition of an infinite system as well as by Georg Cantor’s (1845–1918) work on the subject. Dedekind (as well as Cantor) defines an infinite set as a set that can be mapped onto a part of itself (Maraldo, 2017, 279).7 In 1887 he proved that the realm of thoughts, or what he called the “thought-world” (Gedankenwelt), is infinite by showing that every thought can be the content of another thought and that the latter thought can also be a content of a further thought, and so on ad infinitum, so that each member of the infinite sequence is within the “thought-world,” which thus must be infinite.8 Given this Gedankenwelt, “the totality T of all things that can be objects of my thought,” the thought of T would itself be a part of T, making the system T infinite (Dedekind, 1963, 63).9 This is an example of a self-replicating system whereby a system (or set) is infinite when it is akin to a part of itself. This is what Royce recasts in the form of a self-representative system, describing it as “a system that can be exactly represented or imaged, element for element, by one of its own constituent parts” (1912, 502ff).10 Nishida likewise took Dedekind to mean that “a system is infinite [無限, unendlich] when it can reflect [写し得る] itself within itself” (NKZ 1:264), emphasizing that “within our reflective consciousness [反省的 意識], we can again make into an object of our thought the fact that we make ourselves into an object of thought.” Following Royce, Nishida asserts that the infinite series in mathematics derives from this infinity of the self-imaging quality of thinking (263–266). For in reflecting on oneself, the reflective awareness contains all the contents of awareness including the awareness of one’s self-awareness or self-­ reflection (Royce, 1912, 526–534). There is, however, an apparent paradox arising from that dynamic. While the elements mirror the whole, the whole itself escapes reduction to its mirror-image since the latter only occurs within it. Despite the fact that each smaller map depicts  We should keep in mind here Cantor’s 1883 definition of a set: “A set is a many [Viele] which allows itself to be thought of as a one [Eine]” (1932, 204; Rucker, 1982, 206). 8  This is in his Was Sind Und Was Sollen Die Zahlen? (What Are Numbers and What They Mean) translated as Essays on the Theory of Numbers (Dedekind, 1963, 64 [§66]). The translator Beman renders Gedankenwelt as “realm of thoughts” while I translate it here as “thought-world.” On this see also Rucker (1982, 50). 9  Also see Maraldo (2017, 280). 10  Royce (1912, 510–511) refers to Dedekind’s argument about infinite sets (Dedekind, 1963, 64–66). 7

178

J. W. M. Krummel

every detail of the original area mapped, from another perspective, each map, covering only a portion of the original space, fails to exhaust its entirety. Due to its perpetual incompletion, this process of self-reflection is endless: “When in self-awareness the self makes its own activity its object and reflects [hansei suru] upon it […], the self’s reflecting [hansei] on itself, its reflecting or mirroring [utsusu] itself, is not simply about what had transpired, for it consists in an endless process of unification” (NKZ 2:15–16). The infinity here entails endlessness and incompletion. Self-awareness as self-reflexive is an act of endless self-development (自己発 展) (15), constitutive without end as it determines the pre-given infinite. In this process, self-awareness unfolds in infinitely self-differentiating but self-replicating fractals. In explicating this paradox, Nishida (NKZ 1:265) also refers to Bolzano’s formula, from Paradoxes of the Infinite (Paradoxien des Unendlichen) as cited by Royce, and which Dedekind himself modelled his argument after, that for any true proposition A, the proposition “A is true” is a proposition (A’) distinct from A. That latter proposition A’ that asserts the truth of A is also true, and further the proposition that A’ is true (A”) is also true, and so on ad infinitum. Each proposition of truth implies an infinity of further propositions of truths (of propositions…), and the class of all true propositions would be infinite (Bolzano, 1950, 84–85 [§13]; Royce, 1912, 543–544). Nishida recognized that such a system presupposes its infinity, which realizes itself in its iterative self-reflexion. But the process is never completed due to its implied infinity. Nishida suggests that this dynamic whole of an implicitly endlessly unfolding infinity is the unity – even if perpetually incomplete – assumed by self-awareness (NKZ 1:265–266). Nishida, under inspiration from the proto-­ phenomenological Neo-Kantian Emil Lask,11 will eventually equate that dynamic whole, mirroring itself while escaping reduction to its mirror-image, with concrete lived experience (Erlebnis), en-folding the infinity of possibilities and un-folding them as they become abstracted and articulated.

Place As he came to see that self-awareness is ultimately indeterminate in its implicit infinity, Nishida eventually shifts his focus to include the social and relational aspects of the world lying beyond the ego. His theory of place (basho, 場所) served as a bridge in this gradual turn, and he develops his understanding of self-awareness accordingly. He interprets judgment to be an expression of the self-awareness of an indeterminate substratum. In “On Internal Perception” (「内部知覚について」) in his 1927 collection From the Working to the Seeing (『働くものから見るもの へ』), Nishida speaks of that substratum of judgment to be “a unification of predicates without end, that is, what unifies endless judgments,” beyond judgment,

 This is discussed in my paper, “Lask, Heidegger, and Nishida: From Meaning as Object to Horizon and Place” in a forthcoming volume edited by Ralph Müller on the Kyoto School in Davos. 11

10  Self-Awareness in Nishida as Auto-Realization qua Determination…

179

beyond all acts, and which our act of judgment always intends but never reaches (NKZ 4:97). In section “The determination of the nothing”, Nishida takes mental acts as “engendering the self within itself,” and states that there is no self before the act of self-knowledge in self-­awareness (127). Directing his attention towards that wherein such acts of unification obtain, Nishida is eventually led to the concept of place (basho). In his first usage of this concept, Nishida affirms the oneness of the knowing “I,” the known “I,” and the place wherein the “I” knows itself (127), and views the substratum of self-awareness as such a place that “envelops the whole” (128–129). In the essay “That which is Working” (「働くもの」), Nishida reverses Aristotle’s founding of judgment on that which becomes the (grammatical or logical) subject but not the predicate, to found judicative knowledge instead on the predicate, subsuming the subject (177). In a subsumptive judgment, the subject of the proposition as a particular is subsumed by the predicate as the universal. As we keep moving in the transcendental direction towards more and more inclusive and universal predicates, subsuming the more determinate ones, we arrive, not at a thing that becomes the subject of a proposition, but rather a place that becomes the predicate but never a subject (316). He thematizes this in the next essay of the book, “Place” (「場所」), originally published in 1926. In his essay “Place,” Nishida writes that instead of beginning his inquiry with the Kantian premise of the subject-object relation, he wants to start from “the idea of self-awareness [jikaku] wherein the self reflects [utsusu] itself within itself” (NKZ 4:215). He had already concluded that consciousness cannot be objectified, cannot be conceptualized or made into the subject of a proposition; it is a “consciousness that is conscious” but never the “consciousness one is conscious of.” But now he takes this to mean that it is a “place” for propositions articulating its self-­reflections – a place where knowledge is established. And that place requires a further place contextualizing it. Further, the more inclusive the context, the less determined the place. Ultimately the final unobjectifiable place, escaping reductive statements (affirmative or negative), is neither being nor non-being (213). Undefinable as any thing determinate, it is a “nothing” (無) (220), or the “place of true nothing” (真の 無の場所) or “place of absolute nothing” (絶対無の場所). In fact, from Nishida’s perspective, Kant’s “transcendental consciousness” or “consciousness-in-general,” when taken as the subject of cognition, is still a determined consciousness and not yet that indeterminate place for which it must instead be seen as the gateway (234, 236).12 Nishida incorporates his earlier characterization of self-awareness by describing this place as mirroring itself within. That is to say that the more inclusive place not only envelops the more limited place but reflects or mirrors itself in the latter.13 He uses the term tsutsumu (包む) for “enveloping” or “enclosing” almost interchangeably with utsusu (写す) for “mirroring” or “reflecting.” And in this context of an ultimately unobjectifiable place, “true self-awareness” would be when “we lose even the consciousness of self-awareness itself” (309). For when we

12 13

 On this also see Ishihara (2017, 203).  Also see Maraldo (2017, 326–327).

180

J. W. M. Krummel

transcend objectifying consciousness, we enter the realm of selfless “intuition” (直 観) at the place of nothing beyond the subject/object dichotomy. Nishida views cognition in its objectification of material and its judgment which places this objectification in propositional form – both as reconstructions of intuition – to be founded upon the immanent self-determination of an epistemically and propositionally undetermined, nondifferentiated, and non-substantial nothingness. The difference within the judgment between subject and predicate corresponds to the difference between judgment and the judging act left out of the judgment, and this shift from grammatical subject, to the proposition, to the act involves increasing levels of concretion, away from abstraction, to the more concrete but less defined and broader term on the side of what Nishida calls the transcendental predicate plane (超越的述 語面), until reaching the no longer definable place of nothing. And in reverse, from that most concrete and all-inclusive place, its auto-realization unfolds into increasingly particularized terms as abstractions from their underlying context until reaching the self-reflexive mind, aware of itself and of things in the world, by distinguishing self and not-self, subject and object. The nothing from this place “mirrors” itself by determining itself, its indeterminacy, into the determinate beings it situates (NKZ 13:294–295). The determination includes opposites and contradictories, as affirmative or negative, so that every concept that can be the subject-term of a judgment, along with its opposite in a negating judgment, belong to the same transcendental predicate plane enclosing the concept together with its negation, both as the transcendental predicate’s self-determinations (NKZ 5:33–34). The individual self is thus only a part of this dynamic, whereby “the self, as a true ‘I,’ mirrors itself endlessly within itself, making itself nothing in order to contain the infinity of beings” (NKZ 4:213), and we might add “non-beings.”

The System of Universals In subsequent works Nishida speaks of “self-aware systems” or “systems of self-­ awareness” (自覚的体系), and “self-aware determinations” or “determinations of self-awareness” (自覚的限定), starting with his analysis of the logic of universals in his next major work The System of the Self-Awareness of Universals (『一般者 の自覚的体系』) of 1928–29. Self-awareness, by this stage, can no longer be confined to the awareness of the ego, but more broadly signifies the auto-realization of that which precedes and is more primal than the human subject. Here it characterizes the reflexivity of universals and the system of such universals. Nishida summarizes its logic in his 1928 essay “The Intelligible World” (「叡智的世界」), included in the book, in terms of a threefold system of individuals, universals, and the world. He unfolds what he had described earlier as “place” (basho) in terms of “universals” (ippansha, 一般者) that situate individuals within: the universal of judgment, the universal of self-awareness (taken in a narrower sense), and the universal of intelligibility (meaning). In the first  – and the shallowest and most

10  Self-Awareness in Nishida as Auto-Realization qua Determination…

181

abstract – level we make judgments about objects in the natural world on the basis of universals of judgment or judicative universals (判断的一般者). On the second more concrete level, we are self-aware in the world of consciousness on the basis of universals of self-awareness or self-aware universals (自覚的一般者). And on the third and even more concrete and deepest level, we are immersed in the world of intelligible universals or universals of intelligibility (叡智的一般者) that are pre-­ conceptual or lived meanings, norms, values, and so on (NKZ 5:123). Each phenomenon is established by the layering of these “universals,” with the lower (abstract) level universal rooted in the higher (concrete) level universal. In the concluding section, Nishida adds a fourth level, the level of religious consciousness (宗 教的意識), involving self-negation and subsuming everything under the absolute nothing as the world’s un/ground.14 In each level there is a distinct world founded upon a distinct class of universals with each level (of universal or world) reflexively realized in the narrower one.15 Propositional knowledge arises when we think of something and objectify it. Nishida sees this as the self-determination of the predicate understood as a judicative universal. It conceptually determines external phenomena in terms of what for Kant are conceptual categories and forms of intuition (space and time). In turn, the judging “I,” expressing itself in that judicative universal to construct judgments, is the self-aware consciousness, the apperceptive (or self-aware) universal to which the predicate must implicitly refer (NKZ 5:31, 64). This is where psychological phenomena are internally determined. The natural realm (自然界) as thus determined is implaced in the realm of consciousness (意識界) established by that self-­ determination of the universal of self-awareness. The judicative universal is only its intellectual or abstract determination. Our intentional consciousness of the identity of things thus depends on the self-awareness of our own self-identity (NKZ 2:106; 3:247; 5:106, 433–434; 7:322).16 Nishida states: “The judicative universal is implaced within the universal of self-awareness, and as what is enveloped by the latter, we must consider the determination of the judicative universal as an abstract determination of the universal of self-awareness, that is, as an intellectual [or: epistemic] [知的] self-awareness. Behind judicative determinations, there must thoroughly be the significance of the determination of self-awareness. We can say that judicative determination is established by means of the determination of self-­ awareness” (NKZ 5:200).17 The universal of judgment as such is positioned within the universal of self-awareness as the context wherein we can realize the validity of

 On these levels, see Odagiri (2008, 77, 78).  Nishida further divides the universals into sub-levels. For example, the universal of judgment is divided, from the most abstract to the most concrete, into the universal of subsumption (subsumptive universal) as its formal level, the universal of judgment (judicative universal) in the narrow sense as its static level, and the universal of syllogism (syllogistic universal) as its active level. 16  See Maraldo (2017, 295–296) on this and the following. 17  On this also see Kobayashi (2004, 182–183). 14 15

182

J. W. M. Krummel

propositions, that is, its truthfulness, appearing in the former (127–128).18 This also means that that self-aware universal, in turn, is concretely situated within the world of lived meanings, which in reverse direction become abstracted out to be displayed through judgments. This sort of transcendence is pushed further so that ultimately the intelligible realm (叡智界) is assumed to be behind the realm of consciousness in the self-­ determination of the universal of self-awareness. That is, the universal of self-­ awareness is established by the self-determination of the intelligible universal. Just as judicative consciousness is situated within self-awareness, self-awareness itself is situated in the realm of intelligibility, the world of pre-thematically given values or meaning, such as truth, the good, beauty, and unity (NKZ 5:123ff). Thus “our conscious self conceived through reflection […] is nothing but an image of the self of intelligibility [叡智的自己] [or: noumenal self, intellecting self]” (206). The intelligible universal thus envelops the self-aware self and projects its own image onto the realm of consciousness, and that latter universal of self-awareness then reflects its own image onto the realm of nature by enveloping the judicative universal (Kobayashi, 2004, 183). Nishida names truth, goodness, and beauty here as three types of intelligible (or noumenal) ideas (167). He characterizes these ideas as “transcendent (al) objects” (超越的対象) and intelligible noema (叡智的ノエマ), reflecting not only the influence of Husserl but also Lask for whom such meaning-­ categories are “objective” and independent of the subject-knower in the sense of being lived prior to cognitive construction. The world of such meanings is the intelligible world (叡智的世界) which, in Husserlian terms, is the “life-world,” the world of our everyday, lived experience or, in Heideggerian terms, the world of our “being-in-the-world.” Nishida also characterizes this realm in terms of universals of action as well as of expression (行為的・表現的一般者), where the self realizes itself as an emotive self (感情的自己), a volitional self (意志的自己), and further a moral self (道徳的自己). Nishida argues that self-awareness, on its practical side, is a volitional self-awareness (意志的自覚). Insofar as willing is connected to action, he says here that the self is an enactive self (行為的自己), which in acting “incorporates into the self the outer world transcending its own consciousness, forming events of the outer world into expressions of its own content as its volitional realizations” (155). The noumenal self, Nishida emphasizes, is thus active in

 For example, Nishida in his early work had recognized the importance of our recognition of the validity (妥当) or truth/falsity that accompanies our cognitive judgments, which however in turn implies infinity: “the infinity [無限性] of thinking is also clear from the nature of thought as a consciousness of validity. Thinking is not simply a consciousness of representations, but also a consciousness of validity, that is, a consciousness of truth […]. As a consciousness of truth, a consciousness of validity, thinking contains […] infinity” (NKZ 1:265). Every (affirmative) judgment is accompanied by an implicit understanding – or claim – that its predication is true or valid. This veritative aspect of judgment is distinct from its predicative aspect. But this also entails an infinity in that the movement from the predicative to the veritative aspect that pronounces a judgment to be true can be repeated, or mirrored, infinitely: one is certain one’s judgment is true, certain of that certainty, certain of the certainty of that certainty, and so on (Suares, 2011, 17). 18

10  Self-Awareness in Nishida as Auto-Realization qua Determination…

183

the meaningful world. This provides the context for cognition at the judicative level and for self-awareness as well (150–151). The incompletion in self-awareness, however, indicates its situatedness within a world that is itself contingent, grounded upon an undefinable, indeterminate openness. Living this world of meanings, as a meaning-understanding self, the noumenal self cannot be determined by a judicative universal and is hence unobjectifiable, nor can it be reductively determined by a universal of self-awareness as a conscious being or Cartesian cogito. Nishida thus also calls it a “transcendental self” (超越的 自己). Yet this is not to be confused with the transcendental subject of Kant or Husserl. As before, Nishida here criticizes Kant’s subject of cognition and Husserl’s pure consciousness as still “determined,” as “consciousness we are conscious of” ( 意識せられた意識), while the noumenal self is the “consciousness that is conscious” (意識する意識) (NKZ 4:319; 5:149; 12:16). In “The Intelligible World,” he grasps both ideas of Kant and Husserl as abstract and intellectual aspects of the “noumenal self,” mere formal correlates to the content of the universal of self-­ awareness (NKZ 5:141, 147, 149).19 Self-awareness captures in reflexivity only a fleeting shadow of that fuller but indeterminate context of the self acting in the world (137). In the intelligible world, the nature of our self, even while guided by meanings, is structurally indeterminate so that its self-reflection will be uncertain. Facing uncertainty, it is anxious; it is a confused or wandering self (迷える自己) (179). Truth, goodness, and beauty, as intelligible ideas escaping judicative definitions or self-conscious determinations, manifest the contingent and voluntary character of ongoing self-reflection, subject to revision by oneself and others (178). While they are given in the lived world, they are open to reconsideration and redefinition. The moral self struggles with “the contradiction of itself” (175) between “the self realizing the idea” and “the will that negates the idea and moves towards the nothing,” entailing “the direction of anti-value [反価値]” (174). For Nishida, this is what it means to live with free will in a meaningful world (172–174).20 The self’s freedom is thus also its insecurity and self-conflict. It signifies its groundlessness and, unlike the unity of apperception for Kant, is not purely rational (175–76). Nishida grasps that experience of freedom and insecurity as the “seeing” of the deepest and most originary layer, the ultimate “place of absolute nothing,” transcending and establishing the lower level restrictions of universals and their various oppositions and contradictions unfolding from it and determining it. Nishida characterizes this “seeing” as a “seeing without a seer,” an auto-determination of the indeterminate, and also describes this as a “religious experience” (宗教的経験).21 This latter realm is more directly the topic of his next book.

 See Ishihara (2017, 104).  As free, the self can transgress the very laws of reason it legislates as Reiner Schürmann, in his many works, argues decades later. The self here is free to realize or contravene given norms. But this is also an insight of Fyodor Dostoevsky that Nishida was certainly aware of. 21  On this see Ōta (2014, 199–200). 19 20

184

J. W. M. Krummel

The Determination of the Nothing In working on the system of universals, Nishida asks what universal determines itself into this intelligible world as revealed in its groundlessness and what its nature is (NKZ 5:101). That ultimate universal, however, cannot be anything specifiable. Hence Nishida calls it the nothing (無) underlying all differentiation and specifications. If one traces self-awareness back to its root-source behind the intelligible world, in “absolute noetic transcendence” (絶対のノエシス的超越) (180), one realizes its auto-realization from where “there is neither seer nor seen.” With the deepening of self-awareness, the subject/object opposition gradually fades away “in the universal of intellectual intuition [知的直観の一般者]” (158) below the realms of nature (objects), consciousness (subject), and intelligibility (meanings).22 Its self-­ determination in those realms is implied in the title of his following work of 1930, The Determination of the Nothing in Self-Awareness (『無の自覚的限定』). Again, self-determination and self-awareness are here reflexive. It is a noematic determination, but this also means that self-awareness is self-contradictory in that the self seen – as mirrored image, objectified as noema – is not the seeing self. Its self-awareness is in fact its self-negation into what it is not. And in relation to that objectified self, the seeing self itself is nothing, not a being. The nothing here is the true subjectum of its self-determination in self-awareness. In reverse direction as the self realizes the nothingness underlying itself, it disappears. Nishida explains that “to say that the self can not be seen in the direction of reflection means nothing other than that the seen self disappears, and when that self disappears true seeing becomes possible” (NKZ 6:95). In other words, the self-awareness as auto-realization of the absolute nothing, which at the same time is our own self-awareness, involves three or four layers of such envelopment – whether taken in terms of a series of places or of a system of universals – and “seeing.”

The Other Through the 1930s, Nishida increasingly expresses his understanding that self-­ awareness is mediated in its active involvement with the world, both socially and historically. Self-awareness, in interpersonal terms, is facilitated by its encounter with what negates the self, its “absolute other” (絶対他). Nishida investigates this interpersonal structure of self-awareness in his 1932 essay, “I and Thou” (「私と 汝」) (NKZ 6:341ff). This encounter with another person entails the recognition of the absolute other within oneself and the nothingness defining and distinguishing one’s own being as not that other.23 But the otherness of the other means that the other as other escapes one’s grasp. This obviously has ethical implications, similar 22 23

 See Ishihara (2017, 106–107).  See Maraldo (2017, 332).

10  Self-Awareness in Nishida as Auto-Realization qua Determination…

185

to Martin Buber’s more famous analysis of otherness: “Because the absolute other harbored in the depths of the self possesses the significance of the absolute thou, we feel infinite responsibility in the depths of the self” (NKZ 6:420). We may look back to find an antecedent idea in Royce, who states how in the presence of the absolute, thought finds not itself but its own other as the truth. It finds truth as its other “by seeing, in the endless process of its own failure, the necessity of its own defeat – the need of Another” (Royce, 1912, 548). Thus thought, in the face of that other, recognizes “itself as a failure” and represents “to itself its own defeat.” In Nishida’s case, self-awareness as such possesses not only a religious but also a social dimension, leading Nishida to what he comes to call the historical world.

The Historical World and the Dialectical Universal Nishida’s dynamic of reflexive self-awareness assumes the world as its broader context, reflected in and shaping the self in interaction with others. Nishida shifts his attention to that outer world during the 1930s and develops his understanding of self-awareness from the world’s perspective whereby the world in mirroring itself is self-aware through us (NKZ 10:471). Nishida thus rephrases the three universals of judgment, self-awareness, and intelligibility in terms of the natural world (自然界), the world of life (生命界), and the historical world (歴史的世界), along with the fourth level of the nothing un/grounding these realms. Self-awareness now explicitly involves the body working interactively with the world. We act upon what we see and we see in accordance with how we act in what Nishida calls enactive intuition (行為的直観). Through bodily engagements with the world in enactive intuition, we cultivate and deepen our self-awareness,24 transcending the impasse of mere intellectual analysis. Such an impasse might be exemplified in the belief of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s fictional character, the Ridiculous Man (in his short story “Dream of a Ridiculous Man”), that “consciousness of life is higher than life itself.” But interactively absorbed in the world, we are immersed in the histories that form us and which we in turn form as historical and practical bodies (歴史的実践的身 体). And our acting in the world, shaping it, is also the world’s own self-shaping. For Nishida, we are thus creative elements of the creative world. In the sense that the world is reflexive in mirroring itself within itself, Nishida ascribes self-awareness to the world. As self-aware individuals we are its self-­ mirroring “focal points” “at which the world expresses itself,” its self-expressive points (自己表現点) as well as points of self-awareness (自覚点) (NKZ 11:378, 449). The world expresses itself while expressing its elements that in turn express it.25 Self-awareness thus “proceeds not from the self, but from the world […]. When

 On this see Maraldo (2017, 339–340).  Maraldo (2017, 323) explains that the Japanese term for “expression” (表現) doubles the sense of letting-appear and manifest (表す, 現す). 24 25

186

J. W. M. Krummel

the world becomes self-aware, our self becomes self-aware. And when our self becomes self-aware, the world becomes self-aware” (NKZ 10:557, 559). He writes that even “philosophy is established in the standpoint of the world reflecting itself, as the self-awareness of the world itself […]. It is when the world our self is in […] becomes self-aware […] that we philosophize […]. For our self-awareness expresses the world’s self-awareness” (NKZ 10:471–472). But as self-awareness in its depth reveals the self-contradictions of life-and-death, we find our enactive expressions and intuitions predicated upon the indeterminacy of the world’s un/ground. In his 1943 essay “On Self-Awareness,” Nishida suggests that self-identity is not that of a substance but of a “contradictory self-identity of many and one” (多と一の矛盾的 自己同一). This structure is reflected through differentiation into a multiplicity whereby each of the many are also contradictory self-identities within themselves and vis-à-vis one another, in an endlessly unfolding fractal. As implied in his earlier works, the one and the many here are the same and yet different, as in Dedekind’s infinite system with its subsets or in Royce’s master map and its self-­representations. This structure is endlessly repeated within the world imaging itself: “there is no reality of the world separate from self-expression; the world is something that expresses itself within itself” (481).26 The individual’s awareness partakes in that reflexivity universally at work. But that world’s un/grounding upon the nothing, understood as indeterminacy, is what allows for novelty in history and in our understanding of history.

The Religious Awareness of God or the Absolute In his final essay of 1945, “The Logic of Place and the Religious Worldview” (「場 所的論理と宗教的世界観」), Nishida returns to the thematic of the other in terms of the other to one’s being, that is, death, as well as the other to one’s finitude, that is, the infinite. Both senses converge in the concept of the absolute nothing and he gives them a religious significance. In the depths of self-awareness, one existentially realizes the tension between life and death, finitizing one’s being between natality and mortality. But this awareness, for Nishida, is a religious (宗教的) awareness. What theistic religion calls “God” (神), for Nishida, is what the finite self immediately faces in that religious self-awareness. Nishida describes this relation to the infinite in terms of an “inverse correspondence” (逆対応) whereby my awareness is an expression of the awareness of the absolute – in both senses of the genitive  – transcending the awareness of any determinate form. “Religious consciousness” (宗教的意識) is precisely this “self-awareness of absolute nothing,” where absolute nothing is both the subject and object of awareness manifesting through our own self-awareness.

 Nishida here uses the Japanese for “self-expression” (自己表現) to refer to what Royce meant by “self-representation.” 26

10  Self-Awareness in Nishida as Auto-Realization qua Determination…

187

 he Incompleteness of the Infinite: The Absolute T as Indeterminate In the variety of ways that Nishida understands self-awareness throughout his oeuvre, he presupposes the infinite or indeterminate (mugen, mugentei), which he also designates as the nothing (mu), grounding but also ungrounding it, exceeding its finite expressions that mirror it without exhausting it. The Japanese word for infinite, mugen (無限) also implies the sense of indeterminate, mugentei (無限定). They are interchangeable in Japanese as both mean the lack of an end or limit. This is indeed what Nishida has in mind by “the nothing” or “nothingness” (無).27 One is reminded of the mathematician Kurt Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem of 1930 according to which no formal system succeeds in grounding itself, proving that mathematics by nature is open-ended and can never be finalized.28 Gödel’s Theorem appears as Proposition VI in his 1931 paper “On Formally Undecidable Propositions in Principia Mathematica and Related Systems I”: “All consistent axiomatic formulations of number theory include undecidable propositions.”29 By formal system Gödel specifically means a set of mathematical axioms and rules and procedures for combining the axioms or, more generally, a rule-governed system, to produce proofs of theorems. “Proofs are demonstrations within fixed systems of propositions” (Hofstadter, 1999, 18). In Gödel’s case, more specifically the fixed system that “proof” refers to was that of Principia Mathematica by Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead, published between 1910 and 1913. Gödel’s point was that any statement of number theory cannot be proven in the system of Principia Mathematica, and hence that system is “incomplete.” But by extension this also meant that any axiomatic system is incomplete (18–19). Gödel proposed two Incompleteness Theorems whereby formal systems are subject to two limitations. His First Incompleteness Theorem was that no formal system T is capable of deciding every statement about natural numbers; that is, for any given finite system (T), there is something that it can neither prove nor disprove, a truth that the finite system cannot recognize as true, a truth escaping its grasp and hence unnamable according to it.30 In other words, any formal system T is incomplete. Even if everything that the formal system can prove is true, not everything true can be proven by that formal system. Gödel’s Second Incompleteness Theorem was that no formal system T can establish its own consistency (Rucker, 1982, 192). While other consequences might be deduced from the formal system, it cannot prove that it itself is consistent, that no contradiction can be derived from it (289). Even if we have a single unified  For more on the meaning of the “nothing” or “nothingness” (mu) in Nishida, see Krummel (2018).  Dedekind’s notion of the “thought-world” as an infinite system that Nishida refers to has been related to the undefinability theorem attributed to Alfred Tarski’s discovery of 1933. But in fact Gödel discovered this theorem – that arithmetical truth cannot be defined in arithmetic – previously in 1930 while proving his Incompleteness Theorems which were published in 1931. 29  Gödel (2012); the quotation is from Hofstadter (1999, 17). 30  See Rucker (1982, 165, 192, 289).

27

28

188

J. W. M. Krummel

concept of truth guiding our efforts to maintain a system’s consistency, it cannot be defined within the system (210). Thus, (1) there are truths that cannot be proven within a formal system, and (2) no formal system can prove its own consistency (non-contradiction). Both limitations refer to something exceeding the formal system. Given the infinite system of natural numbers, no finite theory can exhaustively describe or predict all of its facts (141, 169). But more generally this means that if reality is essentially infinite, any system of knowledge is, and must remain, fundamentally incomplete, endlessly subject to revision (173). And if every single fact implies the infinity of its conditions, it would even be impossible to describe exhaustively any single fact or thing (152). Noticing the parallels with Nishida, Gödel’s former student, the Japanese mathematician and logician Takeuchi Gaishi (竹内外 史) (1926–2017), appropriated Nishida’s concepts of self-reflection and intuition and attempted to converge them with Gödel’s insights (Akiyoshi Ryota & Arana, 2019, 1)31 by proposing something similar to Dedekind’s infinite Gedankenwelt, what Takeuchi calls the “infinite mind,” “a mind which can investigate infinitely [無 限] many things” as a necessary premise for modern mathematics (Takeuti, 1972, 172, 172–174).32 This is indeed reminiscent of Nishida’s notion of self-awareness which necessarily refers to, and presupposes in mirroring, that infinite or absolute nothing exceeding the finite mind thinking it, like Dedekind’s set of all sets or Royce’s self-mapping map. Similar to Takeuchi’s notion of the infinite mind, contemporary mathematician Rudy Rucker (1982, 50) speaks of the mindscape, which, like the class of all sets, is infinite. Rucker asks whether such a mindscape is an organic one or merely a many without coherence. Cantor, in a letter to Dedekind, called a multiplicity (Vielheit) that cannot be conceived as “one finished thing” (ein fertiges Ding) an absolutely infinite or inconsistent multiplicity (absolut Unendliche oder inkonsistente Vielheiten).33 Rucker shows how for any universe T of possible thoughts, the thought of T as a whole will be another new thought additional to that original collection of possible thoughts, and so on, leading to an endless sequence of approximations without ever converging on anything definite. So the question is whether Rucker’s mindscape or Takeuchi’s infinite mind, or Nishida’s self-aware absolute nothing, even if infinite, can exist as a single entity. For example, if we think of R as the set of all sets that are not members of themselves, since it is not a member of itself, it in fact is a member of itself; but if we think of it thus as a member of itself, it then is not a member of itself. Thus to think of R as such a set leads to its self-contradiction.

 See Takeuchi’s papers “On Mathematics” (「数学について」) (Takeuti, 1972) and “Proof Theory and Set Theory” (Takeuti, 1985). His English publications spelled his name as “Takeuti, Gaisi,” but if we follow the currently conventional Romanization, it would be “Takeuchi Gaishi.” 32  Here he uses the English “self-reflection” in his appropriation of Nishida’s “self-awareness.” Also see Takeuti (1985). 33  On the other hand, he called a multiplicity that can be conceived as “one thing” (einem Ding), a consistent multiplicity (eine konsistente Vielheit) or a “set” (eine “Menge”). This is in his 1899 letter to Dedekind in Cantor (1932, 443), and translated by Stefan Bauer-Mengelberg in Heijenoort (1967, 114). 31

10  Self-Awareness in Nishida as Auto-Realization qua Determination…

189

We are therefore forced, according to Rucker (1982, 208), to conclude that it is not a set, not a single unified thing, but rather a many: Cantor’s absolute infinity. The rule in set theory normally is therefore that no set is a member of itself. Nishida would remind us here that it is not a thing, a being, or an object, but instead no-­ thing, nothing. Without knowing of Nishida, Rucker during his discussion of the absolute infinite refers to Rudolf Otto’s (1957, 38–53) description (in Mysticism East and West) of two types of meditation, the Inward Way and the Way of Unifying Vision, and interprets their correspondence to mean: “Nothing is the same as Everything” (Rucker, 1982, 226). Any attempt to think of everything thinkable leads to an absolutely infinite sequence of approximations without ever converging on anything definite (209) – an undeterminable many without ever being exhausted or completed as a determinate one. Rucker states that the absolute as infinite would have to be an undelimited many in the working out of an endless sequence, an inconceivable nothing, which perhaps, when taken as one, can only be intuited and not conceptualized, and suggests that it is there staring us in the face, underlying everything.34 Rucker claims that even if Cantor’s “absolute infinity” – rendered in the symbol Ω – cannot be conceived rationally, it is given to our immediate pre-­ rational experience (86), analogous to how for Nishida the absolute nothing is intuited, not deduced or thought. So the infinite is not a conceivable one but an indeterminable many. Mathematician and philosopher Arkady Plotinsky (1994, 29) states that indeterminacy “makes its configurations [of any form of containment or control] fundamentally uncontainable and uncontrollable.” Its incompleteness, irreducible to any conceivable oneness, opens a system up to irreducible multiplicity or heterogeneity.35 Royce, in his essay “The One, the Many and the Infinite,” on Rucker’s reading, seems to think that “an infinite set is a good model of the Absolute in that it is both One and Many… One by virtue of its finite definition (e.g., ‘the natural numbers’), yet Many by virtue of the human inability to grasp every member at once” (Rucker, 1982, 347n2). But it is certainly difficult to see the all in both ways simultaneously as one and many, for to see it as a one reductively would exclude its infinity and determine the indeterminate. Rucker refers to Nishida’s close friend, the famous Zen popularizer and author D. T. Suzuki (Suzuki Daisetsu, 鈴木大拙) (1870–1966) and interprets what Suzuki means by satori in Zen in Suzuki’s The Field of Zen to be this instant of “/” between one and many in “one/ many” (Rucker, 1982, 231; Suzuki, 1980, 24). As Rucker states, in Niels Bohr’s language of quantum mechanics, we might speak of one and many thus as mutually exclusive but complementary aspects of reality (Bohr, 1961, 54–55; Rucker, 1982, 235). I would add that, in fact, Bohr’s language of complementarity may be more appropriate to the phenomenon than Nishida’s language of the dialectical identity of contradictories.  See Rucker (1982, 219, 220). Here Rucker refers to what Ludwig Wittgenstein (1981, 186–187 [§6.522]) called “the mystical” (das Mystische). 35  But Plotinsky also points out, seemingly in concord with Nishida, that as a system’s economy thus replicates itself in self-reflexion, in self-differentiation and self-dissemination, the very concept of a self becomes “profoundly problematic” (1994, 32). 34

190

J. W. M. Krummel

Nishida’s understanding of self-awareness, pointing to Gödel’s sense of incompleteness as well as to Cantor’s sense of an absolute infinity, would thus imply a de-reifying awareness, perpetually open and ungrounded. In his 1915 Intuition and Reflection, Nishida wrote that “the true subject [主観] cannot be reflected on [反 省], moreover what is reflected on is already an object [対象] […]. The act of the self that we cannot reflect on has to be the constituting principle [of meanings] […]. What is reflected on as an object of consciousness can no longer be the true constituting act […]. The true constituting act […] must in some sense be what cannot be reflected on” and “not amenable to reflection […]” (NKZ 2:148–149). Of course, it cannot be denied that Nishida himself is reflecting on this constituting act in order to name and discuss it, so the issue could be how to make this accessible for inquiry without objectifying it. In this de-reification, Nishida de-centers self-awareness away from the cogito and back to the act and context constitutive of the cogito and its object. It involves an irreducible process of self-differentiation, assuming its pre-­ reflective – undifferentiated, indeterminate – unity. This self-differentiation occurs through its self-mirroring, perpetually incomplete and failing to exhaust its indeterminateness. In pointing to the indeterminate, designated the nothing, Nishida seeks to move behind the object-directed intentionality of consciousness to its pre-­ reflective, pre-intentional a priori.36 He traces it to the context of the world that is itself un/grounded upon, and by, what is no longer reducible to a determinate I or object.37 Nishida says that “when the self can no longer be seen in the direction of reflection [反省的方向], […] the self that is seen disappears, and when that self disappears true seeing becomes possible” (NKZ 6:95). The self-referential realization that this is what is happening may be equivalent to what the Zen thinker Dōgen (道元) (1200–1253) wrote of in the Genjōkōan (「現状公安」) as studying the self to forget the self and be enlightened by the myriad things of the world. As Ludwig Wittgenstein himself stated, the eye cannot see itself. In his Tractatus Logico-­ Philosophicus, Wittgenstein wrote: “Propositions can represent the whole of reality, but they cannot represent what they must have in common with reality in order to be able to represent it – the logical form” (1981, 78–79 [§4.12]). His point here is that the term or proposition that indicates the object must correspond to the object, but the logical form common to both and establishing their correspondence is only reflected in the term or proposition while escaping its own logical description. He described this with the metaphor of the “eye,” the point being that the act of seeing

 This is the point where Nishida expresses disagreement with Husserl (as well as Brentano) (NKZ 2:154–155), but it is questionable whether Nishida fully understood Husserl. He ignores Husserl’s account of a pre-objectified, pre-reflective awareness in his notion of the “living present” (lebendige Gegenwart) in his phenomenology of time and his idea of the primal I as a “nameless” (Namenlose) “functioning…” (Fungierende))Husserl, 2001, 278). 37  Perhaps Nishida’s idea of reflection or self-awareness in this respect is not unlike Heidegger’s understanding of the da of Dasein. Nishida’s turns beyond individual consciousness to broaden that place of opening wherein beings can manifest, and, after 1930, more explicitly to the world itself and its ungroundedness is, moreover, analogous to Heidegger’s own turn away from subjectivity in his later works. 36

10  Self-Awareness in Nishida as Auto-Realization qua Determination…

191

cannot be analyzed into, or objectified as, some identifiable essence.38 For Nishida, the a priori in self-awareness is groundless. And, like the ego, that world is also displaced within that absolute nothing environing it as its undeterminable horizon. He expresses this displacement in self-awareness with the expressions, “seeing without a seer” and “determination without a determiner” – a “seeing” that occurs, beyond any egological awareness, without any determinate objectified “self,” a state of “no-self” (無我) (NKZ 5:427, 444). Awareness as such, for Nishida, indicates an opening for the manifestation of beings or objects, for their “seeing” or “determination,” without itself being determined (or “seen”) as some being. This also means the auto-realization of the self’s indeterminate un/ground even as it becomes reduced, but without completion, to a determinate object or being. Through self-­ awareness qua self-mirroring we participate in the field of infinite potentialities as it determines itself into determinate actualities. Non-objectifying or non-intentional self-awareness is thus the realization of the nothing as nothing, indeterminacy, incompleteness.39

Bibliography Bohr, N. (1961). Atomic theory and the description of nature: Four essays. Cambridge University Press. Bolzano, B. (1950). Paradoxes of the infinite. Routledge and Kegan Paul. Cantor, G. (1932). Gesammelte Abhandlungen mathematischen und philosophischen Inhalts (A. Fraenkel and E. Zermelo, Eds.). Julius Springer Verlag. Dedekind, R. (1901/1963). Essays on the theory of numbers (W.  W. Beman, Trans.). Dover Publications. (Published originally by Open Court Pub.). Gödel, K. (2012). On formally undecidable propositions of principia mathematica and related systems. Dover Publications. Heisig, J. W. (2001). Philosophers of nothingness: An essay on the Kyoto School. University of Hawai’i Press. Hofstadter, D. R. (1999). Gödel, Escher, Bach: An eternal golden braid. Basic Books. Husserl, E. (2001). Die Bernauer Manuskripte über das Zeitbewusstsein (1917/18). Vol. 33 of Husserliana, Gesammelte Werke. Kluwer Academic Publishers. Ishihara, Y. (2017). Nishida Kitarō no bashoron to chōetsutekina kisozuke (「西田幾多郎の 場所論と超越論的な基礎づけ」) [Nishida Kitarō’s theory of place and its transcendentalist founding]. Nihon no tetsugaku (『日本の哲学』) [Japanese Philosophy] 18 (Kyoto: Showado): 93–112.  Ōhashi (2004, 222) makes use of Wittgenstein’s metaphor in discussing Nishida.  The infinite here, in Nishida’s terms, would be the absolute nothing that embraces without limits any being and its negation (non-being); but also, in Reiner Schürmann’s terms, it would be ontological anarché that exceeds, is in surplus of, any order – principle or end, arché or telos – that we may impose on it. For a comparison of Nishida with Schürmann, see Krummel (2022). Going beyond Nishida or Gödel, we might also regard the unlimited or indeterminate here as symbolic of the unconscious constitutive of consciousness, the meaningless constitutive of meaning, the wasteful or excess as constitutive of the economic – “constitutive of that which is unequivocally opposed to these contaminating forces and is supposed to be purified of them…” (Plotinsky, 1994, 28). 38 39

192

J. W. M. Krummel

Kobayashi, N. (2004). Bigaku shisō: eizō no poiēshisu (「美学思想―影像のポイエーシス」) [Thought on aesthetics: The poiesis of the image]. In Ō. Ryōsuke (Ed.), Kyōtogakuha no shisō: shuju no zō to shisō no potenshyaru (『京都学派の思想―種々の像と思想のポテンシ ャル』) [The thought of the Kyoto School: Various portraits and the potential of thought] (pp. 177–190). Jimbunshoin. Krummel, J.  W. M. (2018). On (the) nothing: Heidegger and Nishida. Continental Philosophy Review, 51(2), 239–268. Krummel, J. W. M. (2022). Zen and anarchy in Reiner Schürmann: Being, nothing, and anontology. Philosophy Today, 66(1 (Winter)), 115–132. Maraldo, J. (2017). Japanese philosophy in the making 1: Crossing paths with Nishida. Chisokudō Publications. Nishida, K. (1947a). Nishida Kitarō zenshū (Vol. 1). Iwanami shoten. Nishida, K. (1947b). Nishida Kitarō zenshū (Vol. 5). Iwanami shoten. Nishida, K. (1950). Nishida Kitarō zenshū (Vol. 2). Iwanami shoten. Nishida, K. (1965a). Nishida Kitarō zenshū (Vol. 6). Iwanami shoten. Nishida, K. (1965b). Nishida Kitarō zenshū (Vol. 7). Iwanami shoten. Nishida, K. (1965c). Nishida Kitarō zenshū (Vol. 10). Iwanami shoten. Nishida, K. (1965d). Nishida Kitarō zenshū (Vol. 11). Iwanami shoten. Nishida, K. (1965e). Nishida Kitarō zenshū (Vol. 3). Iwanami shoten. Nishida, K. (1965f). Nishida Kitarō zenshū (Vol. 4). Iwanami shoten. Nishida, K. (1966). Nishida Kitarō zenshū (Vol. 13). Iwanami shoten. Odagiri, T. (2008). From self-reflexivity to contingency: Nishida Kitarō on self-knowledge. In J.  Heisig & M.  Uehara (Eds.), Frontiers of Japanese philosophy: Origins and possibilities (pp. 73–92). Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture. Ōhashi, R. (2004). Basho to shite no kotoba (「場所としての言葉」) [“Language as Place”]. In Ō. Ryōsuke (Ed.), Kyōtogakuha no shisō: Shuju no zō to shisō no potenshyaru (『京都学 派の思想―種々の像と思想のポテンシャル』) [The thought of the Kyoto School: Various portraits and the potential of thought] (pp. 208–225). Jimbunshoin. Ōta, H. (2014). Futatsu no kōi no tetsugaku: Nishida-Tanabe ronsō wo megutte (「二つの行 為の哲学―西田・田辺論争をめぐってー」) [Two types of philosophy of act: On the Nishida-Tanabe debate]. Nihon tetsugaku kenkyū (『日本哲学研究』) [Research in Japanese Philosophy], 11, 197–219. Otto, R. (1932/1957). Mysticism east and west: A comparative analysis of the nature of mysticism (B. L. Bracey & R. C. Payne, Trans.). Meridian Books. Plotinsky, A. (1994). Complementarity: Anti-epistemology after Bohr and Derrida. Duke University Press. Royce, J. (1912). Supplementary essay: The one, the many, and the infinite. In The world and the individual, first series: The four historical conceptions of being (pp. 471–588). Macmillan. Rucker, R. (1982). Infinity and the mind: The science and philosophy of the infinite. Bantam Books. Ryota, A., & Arana, A. (2019). Takeuti’s proof theory in the context of the Kyoto School. In Kyoto University Research Information Repository (Department Bulletin Paper 46) (pp. 1–17). Suares, P. (2011). The Kyoto School’s takeover of Hegel: Nishida, Nishitani, and Tanabe remake the philosophy of spirit. Lexington Books. Suzuki, D. T. (1980). The field of Zen: Contributions to the middle way, the journal of the Buddhist Society (C. Humphreys, Ed.). The Buddhist Society. Takeuchi, G. (1972). Sūgaku nit suite (「数学について」) [On mathematics]. Kagakukisoron kenkyū (『科学基礎論研究』) [Annals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science], 4(March), 170–174. Takeuti, G. (1985). Proof theory and set theory. Synthese, 62(2), 255–263. Ueda, S. (1991). Nishida Kitarō o yomu (『西田幾多郎を読む』) [Reading Nishida Kitarō]. Iwanami. van Heijenoort, J. (Ed.). (1967). From Frege to Gödel: A source book in mathematical logic, 1879–1931. Harvard University Press. Wittgenstein, L. (1961/1981). Tractatus logico-philosophicus. Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Chapter 11

How to Become Conscious of Consciousness: A Mediation-Focused Approach Shigeru Taguchi

Introduction Consciousness is one of the central topics in modern and contemporary philosophy. Moreover, interdisciplinary debates on consciousness have been taking place since the late twentieth century. Neuroscientists, psychologists, cognitive scientists, artificial intelligence researchers, psychiatrists, and philosophers are working closely together to address the problem of consciousness. For example, the large-scale international conference on consciousness organized by the ASSC (Association of Scientific Studies of Consciousness) is an active forum for such interdisciplinary discussions. However, we have to say that the current situation is still quite chaotic. It is often said that there is not even a unified consensus on the definition of consciousness. I would argue, however, that this situation does not indicate a mere lack, but rather suggests a unique character of the phenomenon of consciousness. “Consciousness” is not a word that is used after first understanding its definition, but a word that is learned naturally in everyday life. Behind this word is a vast accumulation of experience that “defines” the word “consciousness” when we understand and use it. In this chapter, I will shed some light on what is going on in us when we use the concept of consciousness by going back to our basic experiences of consciousness. In the following analysis, I will use a mediation-focused approach. When I say, “A is mediated by B,” that means “A cannot be without B.” This relationship is broader than causality and logical conditions. When I use this concept, I am following Hajime Tanabe’s concept of mediation. Tanabe was a philosopher of the

S. Taguchi (*) Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Geniusas (ed.), Varieties of Self-Awareness, Contributions to Phenomenology 121, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39175-0_11

193

194

S. Taguchi

so-called Kyoto School in Japan. He defines mediation with the intriguing phrase “connecting by cutting.”1 To understand this, we can recall that mediatedness is opposed to immediacy. What is immediate can have substantiality, self-identity, independence, and self-sufficiency. For now, let us focus on substantiality. According to Descartes, a substance is something that does not depend on anything other than itself for its existence. On the contrary, what is mediated depends on something other than itself, and without which it cannot exist. This suggests that the concept of mediation inherently involves difference and otherness. Wherever there is a difference, we can always find a mediation, and when a phenomenon does not consist of itself alone (Tanabe argues that nothing consists of itself alone), various differences and othernesses can be exposed even amidst seemingly independent phenomena. I would like to use the concept of “mediation” as a principle for such a method.2 As I will argue, this method makes us realize that when we think about consciousness, we cannot approach it directly and straightforwardly in the same way as common objects or material things. It is necessary to consider what it means to “think about consciousness.” In other words, we need to “think about thinking of consciousness” or engage in self-reflection on how we think about consciousness.3 I will stress that such a recursive relation is necessarily presupposed when we talk about consciousness. To show this, I will focus on how consciousness is conscious of itself. When we have an explicit self-awareness of consciousness, it is mediated by the negations of consciousness, including the loss of consciousness and the negative givenness of the consciousnesses of others. I will then show that “immediate” consciousness is itself mediated by reflective consciousness. This lets us see that there is a peculiar circularity or recursiveness here that characterizes consciousness. Finally, I will claim that analyses focusing on what mediates the phenomenon of consciousness would be helpful when we are stuck on the question of what consciousness is. Such a shift in focus from being to mediation may contribute to dissolving the difficulties concerning the problem of consciousness.

 Tanabe uses this and similar phrases in many places including Tanabe (1963, 487, 532–533; 1964, 49, 345, 439, 445, 552, 558, 595, 604, 613–614, 626). See also Taguchi (2019, 23–24). 2  For more details on the concept of mediation, see Taguchi (2019). This method is also closely related to “contrastivism” in that it emphasizes relationships that depend on differences. “Contrastivism” is a philosophical stance that is proposed by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (2008) and others (see also Blaauw (2013)). 3  This approach might have something in common with the “meta-problem of consciousness” that David Chalmers (2018) proposes. The meta-problem is to consider why it is difficult to explain consciousness, i.e., to analyze the problem of consciousness in terms of why it is a problem, rather than to analyze consciousness itself directly. 1

11  How to Become Conscious of Consciousness: A Mediation-Focused Approach

195

What Does It Mean to Think About Consciousness? First, let me focus on the question of what occurs in our mind when we use the term “consciousness.” When we hear the word “consciousness,” we feel as if we understand it. However, when we are asked to define or explain it, we are at a loss. (This is an analogous situation to what St. Augustine says about the problem of time.) If there is no common understanding of which phenomenon is referred to by this word, discussions about consciousness will only become confused and little useful progress can be made. To overcome this situation, we need to look at what is going on in our minds when we understand the concept of consciousness. In philosophy (at least in modern philosophy after Kant), it is said that consideration is naïve if it does not include a reflection on the way of thinking (or a self-­ reflection on thinking itself). To know something deeply, it is essential to engage in “thinking about thinking.” When we think about the object of our thought directly and straightforwardly, we are not aware of how we are thinking about it. If we ignore the question of the nature of thinking, we tend to remain trapped in the constraints of our own thinking, to keep running on the same track. (It is as if a fly in a jar cannot find its way out even though the top of the jar is open.) This also applies to the problem of consciousness. If we simply and straightforwardly think about the (vaguely understood) phenomenon of “consciousness,” we tend to get tangled up in the specific constraints of this concept and keep running in circles around the same aporias. This would be the source of the so-called “hard problem of consciousness” (Chalmers, 1995). That is why we need to reflect on what is going on in our thinking when talking about consciousness.

What Makes Us Conscious of Consciousness? In order to fulfil the task I suggested in the previous section, I will transform the question, “how should we reflect on how we think about consciousness?” into the following question: “What are the conditions necessary for us to have the concept of consciousness?” To answer this question, I will take a cue from John Searle’s definition of consciousness. Searle (1999) made a tentative definition of consciousness, which has been accepted by a relatively large number of researchers, especially those engaged in interdisciplinary consciousness studies: By “consciousness” I mean those states of sentience or awareness that typically begin when we wake up in the morning from a dreamless sleep and continue throughout the day until we fall asleep again. Other ways in which consciousness can cease is if we die, go into a coma, or otherwise become “unconscious.” (40–41)

This definition is not especially informative. It does not directly describe what the essential properties of consciousness are. The terms “sentience” and “awareness” add almost nothing to the term “consciousness” because they are rough synonyms for “consciousness.” Removing these words from the definition, the remaining

196

S. Taguchi

content is reduced to the contrast between conscious and non-conscious states. Consciousness is indirectly defined by the fact that it does not exist in dreamless sleep, death, or coma.4 Although this definition does not greatly help us understand what consciousness is, it is an interesting fact that it makes us feel that we are touching on one aspect of the core meaning of the term “consciousness.” This fact gives us a clue to bring to light what makes the concept of consciousness possible. When do we have the concept of consciousness? It is obvious that consciousness is always there in our conscious life. That is why we are not aware of the existence of consciousness in our ordinary lives. We become aware of the existence of consciousness, first and foremost, when it is contrasted with the loss of consciousness. We notice the existence of consciousness through the loss of it. We can understand this situation using the following analogy. The air is always present, but we are usually unaware of its presence. When it is lost or becomes thinner, we notice that it was there. The situation is analogous in the case of consciousness. Through reflection, we realize that we rarely refer to consciousness in a positive way in our daily lives. Except in very special circumstances, we do not think in our daily lives, “yes, I am conscious right now!” Rather, the overwhelming majority of cases refer to consciousness in a negative way, such as “she is not conscious,” “he lost consciousness,” or “I was not conscious of that.” Even when one positively states that someone has consciousness, one usually intends to contrast that with the case where it is absent. For example, in a situation where a large number of injured people are lying on the ground, shouting “this person is conscious!” is an explicit (differentiating) statement of “consciousness” in contrast to the assumed “negation of consciousness” that other people are not conscious, that this person is badly injured and could lose consciousness at any moment, and so on. The positive reference to consciousness can be considered as a “negation of the negation of consciousness,” which means that consciousness is “not absent.” In the other cases, we do not mention consciousness because its existence is so obvious that it does not need to be uttered. This fact shows that it is at least difficult to have an explicit concept of consciousness without experiencing its absence. “Consciousness” can only be specified (or made conscious) as a positive event in opposition to the very impressive event of “losing consciousness,” such as sleep, fainting, anaesthesia, death of others, etc. You might say that one cannot be conscious of the loss of one’s own consciousness. However, you can be naturally aware that you were asleep when you wake up. The same more or less applies to the case of fainting and anaesthesia. If the time in which I was unconscious is nothing at all for me, then the experience before I lost consciousness and the experience after I regained consciousness are directly  There are scientists and philosophers who argue that there is consciousness during dreamless sleep (Windt et al., 2016), but Searle’s definition does not enter scientific debates on consciousness. Instead, it appeals to our everyday understanding of consciousness according to which we usually think that we have (at least almost) no consciousness in dreamless sleep because we cannot (or at least cannot clearly) remember what we experienced in such a state. 4

11  How to Become Conscious of Consciousness: A Mediation-Focused Approach

197

connected without any separation, and the consciousness of “having lost consciousness” should not arise. The “loss of consciousness” is experienced in its own way by oneself. The return from a non-conscious state to consciousness, the rebirth of consciousness, seems to be a remarkable, extraordinary event. How can a state of consciousness arise from a non-conscious state? Primitive humans in prehistoric times would have found it an almost mysterious event when they saw someone lose or regain consciousness. Motivated by such experiences, we arguably have created the concept of consciousness. One might say that humans have, throughout their long history, been well acquainted with states of consciousness that, while not explicit and fully reflective, can still count as “consciousness.” Some patients report that they did not feel that a long time had passed after being anesthetized. This suggests that we usually have a sense of time passing after we fall asleep. In the Indian yogic traditions, various forms of “subtle” and “implicit” consciousness have been thematized, as Evan Thompson (2015) impressively describes. In the tradition of phenomenology, phenomenologists have often spoken of “passive” and even “primal passive” consciousness, of which we are not explicitly aware. These are all fine and highly intriguing topics of investigation. However, I do not intend to enter into such fine differentiations of conscious states here. Rather, I want to focus on the rough conception of consciousness as ordinary people have it on a daily basis, prior to academic studies or religious inquiries. Such a crude, unrefined conception of consciousness is defined by the contrast between explicit and non-explicit consciousness. Without it, we cannot arrive at any explicit concept of consciousness in the first place. Only after having such a rough concept of consciousness can we further refine it in a more focused exploration. What I want to focus on here is such a “genealogy” (or formation process) of the concept of consciousness instead of the relation of foundation (Fundierung) between reflective and pre-reflective consciousness.

 he Concept of Consciousness Is Mediated by the Negation T of Consciousness What was the result of the discussion in the previous section? Let me reinterpret my discussion using the concepts of “negation” and “mediation.” In our natural life, consciousness can hardly be made an explicit object of our perception and reflection. It is made explicit when we notice that it is not absent. This non-absence, or the state in which the loss of consciousness is negated, enables the formation of the explicit concept of consciousness. You might say that you feel directly aware of your own consciousness and that this feeling is self-evident. I don’t deny that we have such a feeling. I am not claiming that the emergence of our consciousness itself is mediated by the loss of consciousness. The existence of consciousness itself does

198

S. Taguchi

not presuppose the loss of consciousness. My point is that the explicit and reflective concept of consciousness is mediated by the phenomenon of loss of consciousness. We may feel that our concept of consciousness is a straightforward expression of the presence of consciousness. However, as I argued, the simple presence of consciousness is, like the air, all too natural and obvious in our daily lives. That is why it cannot be explicitly uttered and conceptualized without contrasting it with its negations. Of course, we can be fully, wakefully, and explicitly conscious without contrasting this state with the loss of consciousness. Nevertheless, we cannot form an explicit concept of such a conscious state without an intervening event in which consciousness is not explicitly present. The reason why we feel that the concept of consciousness is so natural and simple is that we have already experienced countless losses and regains of consciousness in the past. It is the accumulation of such background experiences that makes us feel the seeming straightforwardness of the concept of consciousness. When we are asked if we have consciousness (of something), we immediately reflect on our own state of being, and in doing so we confirm the existence of consciousness by instantly contrasting that state with the state of non-explicit consciousness. This is a simple check for the presence of consciousness, which is so natural in its functioning that we are usually unaware of it. Thus, the explicitly thematized concept of consciousness is not a simple concept that straightforwardly names “something that is there,” but a higher-order concept that is already mediated in multiple ways. Especially, the mediation via negation suggested above is arguably the most prominent factor. The explicit thematization of consciousness implies a negation of the absence of consciousness, or in other words, a double negation of consciousness. We understand the presence of our own consciousness through the mediation of its (mostly implicit) contrast with its potential absence. The presence of consciousness is implicitly grasped as one of the mutually exclusive opposites, i.e., that which negates non-consciousness as its counterpart in this opposition. The negation of consciousness not only implies the loss of one’s own consciousness but also relates to the consciousness of others because the consciousness that others have cannot be (straightforwardly) given to me. Here we find the second type of negation. It seems obvious that other humans (presumably many animals also) have consciousness. However, others’ consciousnesses are not given in the same way as my own consciousness. The contrast with this non-givenness of other consciousnesses makes us explicitly aware of the actual givenness of my consciousness. When my consciousness is not contrasted with other consciousnesses, it is experienced as naturally as air, and I am not thematically aware of this extremely basic fact. Mediated by the fact that other consciousnesses are not given to me, I can explicitly recognize that my consciousness is “present” in a peculiar sense. This recognition allows us to have the concept of consciousness as that which each of us has. In this case, consciousness is already objectified as something that each individual can have in contrast to others. Obviously, such objectified consciousness differs from naturally and primordially experienced consciousness.

11  How to Become Conscious of Consciousness: A Mediation-Focused Approach

199

These two consciousnesses cannot be equated, at least not completely.5 I would like to emphasize that the concept of consciousness as that which we individually possess, rather than live through, is by no means primordial but is rather mediated by the prior experience of others. Thus, our naïve, commonplace concept of consciousness is mediated by the experience of a twofold negation. One is the experience of losing consciousness (experience of non- or non-explicit consciousness), and the other is the experience of the fact that the consciousnesses of others are not given to me like my own consciousness. In both cases, the positive recognition of the existence of consciousness implicitly means a double negation (negation of the negation). Without such intervening negations (so to say, without knocking in such wedges), the givenness of consciousness is too obvious to be noticed in a positive and explicit way. It is only by contrast with such “negations” that we can grasp and conceptualize consciousness positively and explicitly.

Mediation by Refection In the next step, I will point out another significant perspective on the mediated nature of the concept of consciousness. When we become aware of the existence of consciousness in contrast to its negations, we are already (at least partly) in the attitude of reflecting on consciousness. In such cases, consciousness is not something that is straightforwardly lived through, but it is an object of reflection even if only a primitive form of it. How can we understand the relation between the concept of consciousness and reflection in more detail? You might think that you can straightforwardly grasp the direct experience of consciousness. However, if you claim that you can do it, you have already performed a kind of reflection, without which you cannot find any clue to your claim. In reflection, it seems that there was an immediate grasping of consciousness already before the very reflection. However, in order to show that there is such an experience of immediate grasping, you have to rely on reflection. Without reflection, you cannot thematize the experience in question in order to say something about it. Thus, ironically, the alleged “immediate” grasping of consciousness can never manifest itself without being mediated by reflection. In a sense, we can safely say that there is a direct experience of consciousness. However, the very fact that there is a direct experience of consciousness that precedes reflection is itself known only through reflection; in other words, this knowledge is mediated by reflection, although what it refers to in it is prior to its reflection.  We might recall Kitaro Nishida’s (1992) concept of “pure experience” as an expression of naturally and primordially experienced consciousness. It would be an interesting task to clarify the relation between such primordial and objectified states of consciousness (and this was one of the major issues that Nishida pursued after An Inquiry into the Good), but we cannot enter into this issue here. 5

200

S. Taguchi

The immediacy of consciousness can only be grasped through its negation, i.e., through a reflection in which consciousness is no longer immediately experienced. Insofar as we discuss the immediacy of consciousness, we can never escape such mediations. If we abstractly deny this fact, nothing is left to do except to take refuge in a kind of mysticism that rejects any language. Some phenomenologists might argue that it is possible to know about pre-­ reflective consciousness directly because consciousness cannot only be thematized by reflection but also is known to itself through the unthematic self-experience (or self-manifestation) of consciousness. I completely agree that there is such a rich dimension of pre-reflective, unthematic, implicit experience of consciousness. However, how did we know that there is such a pre-reflective dimension of experience? There is no other way except through reflection. All phenomenological analyses and investigations are conducted through reflection insofar as we are consciously and carefully carrying out each step. Otherwise, we are forced to claim that we are unconsciously and automatically creating phenomenological considerations and descriptions (which is, of course, absurd).6 One might claim that reflection can distort pre-reflective, direct experience and, therefore, cannot be faithful to the latter. Husserl (1983) argues that such a scepticism against reflection would be self-refuting: All genuine skepticism of whatever kind and persuasion is indicated by the essentially necessary countersense that, in its argumentations, it implicitly presupposes as conditions of the possibility of its validity precisely what it denies in its theses. […] He who also says: I doubt the cognitive signification of reflection, asserts a countersense. For as he declares his doubt, he reflects, and setting down this statement as valid presupposes that reflection actually and without doubt (scl. for the cases present) has the cognitive value doubted, that it does not change the relation to something objective, that the reflectionally unmodified mental process does not forfeit its essence in the transition to reflection. (185–186)

In order to claim that reflection distorts pre-reflective experience, one must know the original, undistorted state of pre-reflective experience. Otherwise, one cannot tell the difference between the original state and the distorted state of experience. However, how could one know this “original” state of experience? One must have employed reflection. Given that one explicitly knows what the original experience is like, one has already made use of reflection, of whatever kind it may be. Husserl admits that reflection modifies experience. Tracing this modification back to the original experience is precisely what reflection does.7 It is a legitimate route to the original experience because it is the only way to thematize what we call “original experience.” Of course, we can still speak of “distortion by reflection” here. But what we want to achieve with this is nothing else than to replace

 As for the relationship between reflection and pre-reflective experience, see also the appropriate explanations in Zahavi (2017, 18–29). 7  Husserl (1983) remarks that “reflection of any kind has the characteristic of being a modification of a consciousness and, moreover, a modification which essentially any consciousness can undergo” (178). “[U]ltimately we get back to mental processes which are absolutely unmodified reflectionally.” 6

11  How to Become Conscious of Consciousness: A Mediation-Focused Approach

201

“inappropriate reflection” with “more appropriate reflection.” In this way, we can improve reflection itself and bring its object to light more adequately in reflection. It is again a reflection that can point out and correct inadequacies in reflection.8 According to Husserl (1983), reflection is “the name of the method of consciousness leading to the cognition of any consciousness whatever” (177). The previous discussion makes us realize that the fact that consciousness exists cannot be thematized independently of the question: How are we conscious of consciousness? We cannot discuss what consciousness is and what it is like if we neglect how it is experienced and reflected upon. One can falsely assume it is done, but that is naïve as a philosophy in that one straightforwardly discusses consciousness as if it were isolated from all that relates to it and as if there were no mediations regarding it. When thinking about a thematic subject, we are habituated to discarding the non-­ thematic things accompanying it. This is what it means to think efficiently (and it matters in our natural, practical life). When one naively surrenders oneself to this natural tendency of thought, one is unaware of the mediated nature of the concept of consciousness. One may mistakenly believe that one can grasp the experience of consciousness directly (without any mediation). In contrast, what philosophy should do is to delicately focus on the fact that the theme of “consciousness” itself is realized through a variety of mediations, a fact that is difficult to notice because it is so obvious.

 he Fundamental Circularity Between Direct Consciousness T and Reflection Now, I would like to take the discussion to the next level. Once we enter the transcendental level, we can no longer take it for granted that reflection is merely a subordinate, derivative dimension of experience. It cannot be considered a trivial fact that immediate consciousness is known only through reflection. Regarding this point, we can find two different forms of dependence or mediation that intersect with each other. 1. On the one hand, reflection, insofar as it is reflection, presupposes prior experience. Reflection is not an activity that creates something original but an activity that goes back to something prior to uncover what it is (whether appropriately or not). In this sense, reflection is dependent on the existence of prior experience. 2. On the other hand, as I argued, the original experience can only become explicitly known to us through reflection. If a reflection is inappropriate and differs

 Wenjing Cai (2013) tries to replace the “data-description model” with the “text-interpretation model” of reflection. According to her, pre-reflective experience is not just fixed data. Rather, “my experience, like a text, has to be encountered and unfolded in endlessly novel perspectives” (350). The meaning of the pre-reflective experience “unfolds itself in the space of interpretation reflection opens up.” 8

202

S. Taguchi

from what I have (unreflectively) felt, this difference or inappropriateness is itself what I am reflecting upon (this time in a new and more appropriate way). Thus, the immediate experience that we know and refer to in our discourse must depend on reflection (or at least the minimally reflective element in consciousness). If you deny this, you are forced to stop “talking” or “thinking” about immediate experience completely because as soon as you do this, you are reflecting. If you deny this fundamental dependence on reflection, you cannot even “imagine” the existence of immediate experience. The question to be addressed now is the following: Is consciousness itself possible without the (at least minimally) reflective nature of experience? In short, there can be no reflection without a preceding direct experience, whereas we cannot explicitly know about this experience without reflection. The self that reflects and is actively conscious comes later than experience. However, in a sense, the preceding phenomenon depends on this later coming one. This is difficult to accept outright because it is not self-evident and seems paradoxical. Yet this is one of the things that Husserl delicately brings to light. In his late manuscript entitled “Temporalization – Monad,” Husserl points out that the temporal order is not the only order of things (1973, 666–670; text 38). In the history of the universe, the Earth once did not exist. The same is true for the human beings who thrive on it and for myself as a member of the human race. Humanity is merely a “minor incident” in the universe. However, this is just a temporal order of things as told (narratively). In transcendental consideration, the situation is reversed (Husserl, 1973, 667). Now, the “I am” is the most primal and fundamental fact whose temporalization makes it possible for time to constitute itself. The world constitutes itself through temporalization and in time. In this transcendental order, what comes later in the temporal order is occasionally more fundamental than the preceding phenomena.9 Husserl thought that the transcendental ego is not a kind of substantial instance but this “I-myself” who is living in the transient present. At the same time, the transcendental ego cannot be separated from the ego doing phenomenology “right now” (in your case, you as a reader who is, hopefully, trying to think phenomenologically to understand what I mean). In this activity, the phenomenologizing ego discloses the transcendental ego as the theme of phenomenological consideration. In the late research manuscripts concerning time-consciousness (C-manuscripts), Husserl thematizes the relation between the primal temporal streaming and the phenomenologizing ego. He remarks: “The streaming is always in advance. But the I is also in advance; it is as wakeful I (transcendental-phenomenologically wakeful) always consciousness-I” (Husserl, 2002, 181). The phenomenologizing ego is not a mere addition (which may or may not be) to the thematic phenomenon of phenomenology, but something that must be presupposed. More precisely, even the fact that it “may or may not be” presupposes its existence. It may not be, and in that sense, it

 As for this reverse order, see Taguchi (2006), 190–191.

9

11  How to Become Conscious of Consciousness: A Mediation-Focused Approach

203

is not necessary from a universal perspective. However, my existence in the transient “here and now,” which is individual and accidental, is at the same time, in its primal facticity, undeniable, and, in this sense (and only in this sense), necessary. This “I-myself” in the fragile, transient moment (which is almost nothing in the objective order of the world) is the core and pivotal point of the whole reality and its transcendental order.10 Thus, there is a structure of mutual dependence here. What precedes me appears as what is dependent on me; the directions from A to B and from B to A intersect, and both poles include each other. This fundamental mediationality (in the sense that there is nothing absolutely isolated and independent) constitutes the primal facticity of the “phenomenologizing ego” and the “primal I” (Ur-Ich) that Husserl brought to light. The primal I is not a god-like ego that transcends me and creates everything; on the contrary, it is a “fragile” living present that can never be fixed, but which is “absolute” in the sense that nothing can appear as actual without being lived by this living core of all experience.11 “My” current perspective is merely a transient, trivial, and accidental fact of experience; at the same time, it is also the ultimate source of the actuality of my experiential life. Such a mutual involvement between the two ways of seeing reality would be behind the interdependence of direct experience and reflection. Consciousness cannot merely be immediate. Even if there is something simply immediate in consciousness, it cannot be the topic of any discussion. In order to be discussed, it must be subject to reflection. The immediacy of consciousness is (at least for us) always a reflected immediacy. It is only when consciousness breaks through its tacit immediacy to appear in its mediated form that consciousness establishes its explicit existence. The consciousness “before” this establishment can only be “constituted” by returning from this primal fact. However, it is not derivative because it is “constituted,” but it is “constituted” as the very process that created the reflecting ego. Returning to this seemingly “paradoxical” fact of mediationality is what is required of a theory of consciousness. Without it, any theory of consciousness will remain naïve. Reflection knows that it comes later than direct consciousness. It is aware of its own ex post, secondary, and derivative nature. That is why reflection itself says that, in a sense, there is no doubt that direct consciousness comes first. This statement has a double meaning. On the one hand, reflection confirms, establishes, and assures that direct consciousness is prior. Reflection confirms to itself that it is derivative and dependent on direct consciousness. On the other hand, the antecedence of direct consciousness is known only through reflection. In this sense, the precedence of direct consciousness itself depends on reflection. Reflection confirms one’s dependence on direct consciousness, but at the same time, this confirmation itself is dependent on reflection. Here is a circularity like a snake swallowing its own head

10 11

 See Taguchi (2006), chap. VII.  As for the fragility of the primal I, see Held (1966, 171–172) and Taguchi (2006, 196).

204

S. Taguchi

or a loop in which two terms mutually encompass the other. Husserl already saw that cognition must necessarily be circular. In the lectures in 1906/07, Husserl wrote: “The necessary referring back of the elucidation of knowledge to itself is manifestly something belonging to the essence of knowledge as such” (2008, 190; 1984, 193). In a manuscript, he even claims that philosophy, as a science that refers back to itself, can only exist in such a circularity.12 We should not be afraid of such circularity, which has no fixed starting point. Varela et  al. (1991) boldly emphasize such a “fundamental circularity” that is groundless and cannot be reduced to a single absolute origin. Maturana and Varela (1987, 240–242) also argue that our knowledge has no fixed point of reference and necessarily operates in a “cognitive circle” and “ongoing recursiveness,” which leaves us a bit dizzy. We should not hastily try to erase this kind of circularity because of insecurity. The problem of consciousness is placed exactly in such a circular situation. Direct consciousness comes to the fore precisely in the activity in which we become conscious of consciousness. The “immediacy” of consciousness can only appear through the mediation of such reflective activity, which necessarily comes later than the very immediacy. To reiterate once again, if one claims that there is a direct consciousness that precedes and is independent of reflection, then one has already done a reflection and one’s claim is dependent on that reflection. If one denies this, then one has no choice but to appeal to “divine revelation” or something else. This is nothing less than a denial of knowledge. This disregard for “the I-myself who is thinking right now” is one of the deepest naïvetés to haunt philosophers. Husserl’s discussion of the “phenomenologizing ego” accurately points out this fact. To depart from this naïveté means to stand in a groundless circularity in which nothing is unmediated. Now, what can be said about consciousness? Pure and simple consciousness is nothing more than the product of a kind of abstraction. Truly concrete consciousness always involves “consciousness of consciousness.” It is only when consciousness is aware of itself that it can manifest itself concretely as a phenomenon. And in the consciousness of consciousness (reflection in the broadest sense), consciousness has the peculiarity of being able to go back to its own origin (to its primal mode, Urmodus). In other words, it is a peculiarity of consciousness that its very origin is mediated.13

 Husserl, manuscript A I 24/5b (no dates). Mertens (1996, 49–50, 132–133) also points out that the circularity of phenomenological ultimate grounding is not erroneous but necessary. 13  Jacques Derrida (1962) seems to have seen this point very clearly. The mediated nature of origins is one of the main themes of his introduction to Husserl’s The Origin of Geometry. 12

11  How to Become Conscious of Consciousness: A Mediation-Focused Approach

205

 orgotten Mediations and the Substantialization F of Consciousness In the previous sections, I showed that the phenomenon of consciousness explicitly stands out through the mediation of its negations and reflections. Now, I would like to dismantle yet another of our preconceptions about consciousness as a stable and unproblematic object. Indeed, it is helpful to have an explicit concept of consciousness in our daily life because it is sometimes necessary to refer to the presence or absence of consciousness in oneself or someone else. However, when we begin to call consciousness by a single noun, what immediately happens is that we “substantialize” or “reify” it. When we refer to something with a noun, we tend to think that there is a “thing” that corresponds to that noun. Before I enter the problem of the substantialization of consciousness, let me use an analogy. A “hole” is an empty space. If you remove the object around a hole (e.g., if you eat a donut), is the hole still there?14 Of course not. Holes can only be identified by contrast with their surroundings. There is no independent substance corresponding to a hole. Nevertheless, we can safely say that “there is a hole.” A hole is something specific, and in our everyday life, there is nothing wrong with saying, “a hole exists.” This example makes it clear that what we refer to as existent is not necessarily a substantial being. Our natural language and our natural way of understanding the world allow us to treat something insubstantial and (at least partly) immaterial as a proper object. In such cases, we must be careful not to substantialize the object in question. A hole exists only when it is joined with its surroundings, i.e., mediated by the surrounding material being. What we call a “hole” is not a simple material object but something that persists as long as it is mediated by other objects. Let us return to the problem of consciousness. In the previous sections, I showed that consciousness can only be conceptualized by being contrasted with non-­ consciousness and also by appearing through reflection. The concept of consciousness is mediated by the experience of its negations and by actual and possible reflections. Without these mediations, we lose the clue to grasping consciousness as an object with contours. Analogous to the hole, consciousness would disappear from our view if we eliminated the phenomena that mediate it. The problem is that this mediated nature of consciousness tends to be forgotten and consciousness is regarded as an independent, thing-like substance. It is true that this tendency itself would be natural because, in our practical life, we need to divert our attention from complex mediations to focus on consciousness as a simple object. For the philosophical understanding of consciousness, however, we should not forget that the simple word “consciousness” hides a variety of mediations behind it. When we reflect, we immediately notice that we cannot find consciousness as a clear-cut  There are abundant ontological arguments for “holes,” but I cannot go into them here (Casati & Varzi, 1995). Only facts that are valid even when considered in a very naive manner will be discussed here. 14

206

S. Taguchi

object of our perception. (We can seemingly do it, but as soon as we try to grasp it, it turns into something intangible and elusive.) Rather, it is a complex phenomenon that meshes not only with the negations of consciousness and its reflections, but also with a wide variety of phenomena, including bodily experiences, habits, instincts, the world, and other agents, to name just a few. Let me sum up. There is nothing wrong with the way we treat consciousness in our everyday lives as if it were a simple object. This is natural in practice, and that is precisely the reason why we created the concept of consciousness and the corresponding noun. However, this tendency toward substantialization should not be carried over into philosophical considerations. In the case of a hole, a quick reflection allows us to realize that it is not a substantial being but depends on other things for its continued existence. In contrast, consciousness is more difficult to reflect upon analytically. It is not simply objective but is extremely close to our own subjective life in which it is embedded. Phenomenologically, it is a typical example of “obviousness” (Selbstverständlichkeit), which is difficult to thematize for us in the natural attitude.15 Therefore, in order to think about consciousness, we need more delicate considerations on how it is mediated by (and embedded in) other phenomena because it is elusive when separated from the related phenomena that mediate it. Such an effort is what we have attempted to do in this paper. Incidentally, the analogy of a hole is merely an analogy to show that something that does not exist materially in isolation, something mediated by other things, can also be an “object” expressed by a single noun, not to say that consciousness is as transparent and empty as a hole. Consciousness is a concrete and “actual” phenomenon that is vividly and tangibly experienced. However, it is not a stand-alone object but one that always appears only when mediated by other phenomena. This is what I wanted to stress using the hole analogy. Consciousness is experienced and felt concretely and vividly, but when we try to seize it as an isolated, stand-alone object, we often fall into unjustified substantialization and abstraction.16 Let me also clear up one more possible misunderstanding. Just because I said that consciousness is elusive and ungraspable in isolation does not mean that it is a transparent and abstract “relation” in itself. Instead, the opposite is true. I want to argue that consciousness consists of intricate occurrences that mediate and are mediated by each other, like an impenetrable forest. And such a complication is what gives us the concrete “feeling” of conscious experience. It is a mistake to think that the emphasis on mediation leads to an idealism that excludes any concreteness

 As for the phenomenological meaning of “obviousness,” see Taguchi (2006, chap. 1).  Sartre (2018) also emphasizes that “[t]here is nothing substantial about consciousness” (15). I consider his concept of consciousness to be highly mediational. He says that “consciousness is what it is not and is not what it is” (117), which precisely suggests a kind of mediation by negation. What is presented here is very close to the mediation we speak of with Tanabe as involving the heterogeneous others. We can assume that Sartre did not understand consciousness as a mere empty relation, but interpreted it as a mediational phenomenon that manifests itself through the involvement of the heterogeneous. (Recall, for example, the relationship between being-in-itself and being-for-itself.) But I cannot go into details here. 15 16

11  How to Become Conscious of Consciousness: A Mediation-Focused Approach

207

(or “substantiveness”). Rather, it is the grasping of the mediated states that is concrete, and it is more abstract and idealistic to ignore the mediated states and view things in isolation. What the mediational view tries to eliminate is only an unjustified substantialization that is divorced from reality. What is concretely and tangibly experienced are specific mediations in and of experiences rather than substance-like objects that are constituted as “effects” of experiences. (You can test if this is the case by stripping any and all mediations from an object. You will not find anything tangible there.) In the first place, mediation is not just a relation. When we talk about relations, we usually think that there is a relation only when there are related terms. In such a case, multiple related terms are already visible, and the relation is considered to be abstractly formed between them. In contrast, in mediation, the mediating/mediated terms need not be made fully explicit. It is possible that something does not exist in isolation and is mediated by something else, even if we do not know by what. Mediation is an “event” in which something involves or is involved by heterogeneous others.17 It is such an event that occurs concretely first, although the alien others involved in it may be shrouded in a fog that cannot be fully penetrated. Even in such cases, it is possible to experience mediation as a concrete occurrence. That is why when we encounter a phenomenon, its mediations can serve as clues or guides for further investigation. In the next section, I will discuss the methodological implications of the mediation-­focused approach. This will further contextualize my discussions about consciousness in the previous sections.

 rom Being to Mediation: The Methodological Implications F of the Mediation-Focused Approach Based on the previous discussions, we can say that when we talk about consciousness, it cannot be a straightforward “thing,” but rather a phenomenon mediated in multiple and complex ways. Before I conclude, I will call attention to the meaning of this shift in understanding the phenomenon of consciousness, or the way we are conscious of consciousness. If we think of consciousness as if it were a single “thing,” we tend to fall into the sterile controversy about whether it “exists” or “does not exist,” as seen in the debates between proponents and opponents of eliminativism (Irvine & Sprevak, 2020) and illusionism (Frankish, 2017) about consciousness. If the word “consciousness” that we use does not correspond to a “thing” but rather to a complex mediated phenomenon, then to ignore these mediations is to lose sight of consciousness. If we turn our eyes away from the various mediations and take only a

 As I suggested in the introduction, according to Tanabe, mediation inherently involves difference and otherness. 17

208

S. Taguchi

segregated part of the complex phenomena in isolation, consciousness will not appear to exist. In contrast, if we are unaware of the functions of mediations and thoughtlessly assume that there is simply an unmediated object called consciousness, we will say that “consciousness exists” but we will be unable to answer the critical question posed by eliminativists and illusionists, namely: “How do you demonstrate the substantial object that you call consciousness and that you claim exists?” This is analogous to the hole of a donut, which appears to be “non-existent” when viewed only in isolation, but clearly “present” when viewed together with the donut. Both views are correct depending on the contexts when incorporated into the mediating phenomena, but they are one-sided and inappropriate when considered in isolation. Eliminativists are right if they want to claim that there is no thing-like substance corresponding to the phenomenon called consciousness. However, if we pay attention to the mediated nature of consciousness, we do not need to eliminate all talk of consciousness from science.18 It is an illusion that science only speaks of purely material objects. Science refers to a lot of phenomena that do not have substantial being. For example, neuroscience cannot do without the term “synapse.” A synapse contains a “synaptic cleft” as an integral part of it.19 However, the synaptic cleft is nothing other than a gap between presynaptic and postsynaptic cells. Between them, there is nothing physical.20 There is no neuronal tissue between axon terminals and dendrites. A term for this non-physical gap is necessary because the existence of this gap makes a significant difference in neuronal functions. This gap itself has specific functions indispensable for neuronal activities. The synaptic cleft is mediated by axons and dendrites because it does not exist without these physical components of neurons. The synapse is mediated by the synaptic cleft, without which what we call a synapse would not exist. In this way, we can talk about something non-physical in science without any problem, and in such cases, related mediations provide reasonable support for the talk about such phenomena. Thus, such a shift in focus from being to mediation dissolves the unnecessary controversy about whether something exists or not. Instead of asking such ontological questions or questions about what it is, we can better move forward scientifically with a mediation-focused analysis, which allows for an approach to the thematic phenomenon that integrates both its physical and non-physical (in a sense, non-­ existent) elements.21

 I might (reluctantly) agree with “entity eliminativism” in certain respects, but not with “discourse eliminativism.” See Irvine and Sprevak (2020). 19  See e.g. Kandel et al. (2021, 57–58). 20  Of course, between axon terminals and dendrites, there are neurotransmitters, synaptic adhesion molecules, etc. However, when we refer to the synaptic cleft, what we mean by it is not these chemical substances or molecules but rather the gap, or the fact that there is nothing between axon terminals and dendrites. 21  For more detailed discussions on this mediation-focused approach and its implications, see Taguchi (2019). 18

11  How to Become Conscious of Consciousness: A Mediation-Focused Approach

209

This approach can be applied to the phenomenon of consciousness. Consciousness is not something that can be found as a straightforward object, but is mediated by diverse phenomena (including its actual and potential loss, the consciousness of others, our bodies, the world, the variety of pre-reflective experiences, etc.). We can even say that consciousness is nothing but a system of intermeshing mediations. This explains that consciousness involves physical phenomena such as brain activities but cannot be reduced to them. Instead of asking, “what is consciousness?” we can ask questions such as “what phenomena mediate what we call consciousness?” and “what specific phenomena, and how are they combined when we say that consciousness exists?” If we focus analyses on mediation in this way, a discussion is less likely to lose its footing and go nowhere. Thus, a mediation-focused analysis may also contribute to dissolving the so-­ called “hard problem of consciousness.” This problem consists in the fact that two fundamentally heterogeneous phenomena, material processes in the brain and subjectively experienced consciousness (qualia), seem to be closely related to each other, yet no one can understand how they are specifically connected to each other. Chalmers (1995) says that it is “widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises” (201). Here, the very phenomenon of mediation is manifested. According to Tanabe, mediation is “connecting by cutting.” It involves difference and connection at the same time. Brain activities and phenomenal consciousness seem to be closely connected, even though they are completely different. Thus, the hard problem of consciousness points to the very fact of mediation itself. If we think in this way, the hard problem of consciousness is transformed from an aporia that paralyzes our thinking to a phenomenon that can be specifically and “phenomenologically” explored. In other words, the “disconnection and connection” between brain processes and phenomenal consciousness is not a bare mystery, but a fact of mediation as a concrete clue to exploration. However, as long as consciousness is regarded as a simple substantial object, it remains difficult to approach the suggested fact of mediation specifically, since such a substantialized consciousness defies concrete approaches. In contrast, if, as we have attempted to do, the concept of consciousness itself is placed in its mediating context and embedded in a network of diverse mediations, a new possibility opens up, namely, the possibility of unraveling this phenomenon of mediation suggested by the “hard problem of consciousness” as the very fact to be explored. More recently, Chalmers has proposed a “meta-problem of consciousness” which attempts to place the problem of consciousness itself in a broader context. He says that the “meta-problem is the problem of explaining why we think consciousness poses a hard problem, or in other terms, the problem of explaining why we think consciousness is hard to explain” (Chalmers, 2018, 6). This can be regarded as a direction that is close to that of the mediation-focused analysis in that it does not simply get caught up in the hard problem of consciousness, but rather tries to distance itself from it in order to analyze the context in which it is embedded. An analysis along these lines would help to unravel the confounding rigidity surrounding the hard problem of consciousness.

210

S. Taguchi

Conclusion What I first emphasized in this paper was that the consciousness of consciousness is mediated by its negations, that is, by the temporary loss of consciousness and the inaccessibility of the consciousness of others. The existence of consciousness is too obvious for consciousness itself to notice. To become aware of it, we must go through the mediation by its negations. In this way, we can re-establish the existence of consciousness as the negation of its negations. If this is the only way to reflectively become aware of consciousness, then all concepts and talk about consciousness presuppose the possibility of its disappearance. Only if it is aware of its own negations (i.e., its own cessations and limitations) can consciousness explicitly make itself its subject matter. Second, this mediated nature of consciousness is not only true for its reflected form but also for consciousness “as it is.” We can assume that there is an “original” form of consciousness before reflection. However, this assumption itself can only appear through reflection. A truly original, genuine form of “direct” consciousness would only be what we assume as an ideal, which can never be studied concretely, and which bears no resemblance to the concrete consciousness we usually know in our lives. If we can access an allegedly original consciousness, it is necessarily done through a consciousness of consciousness, which can be called a form of reflection. What is thought of as the “genuine” immediacy of consciousness is, in fact, mediated by a form of reflection, but that is difficult to notice because reflection is not aware of the activity of reflection itself. This mediatedness of immediacy is arguably one of the secrets of consciousness. This is already suggested by Husserl in relation to the problem of the primal and phenomenologizing I. Thus, the mediation-focused approach has certain advantages in unraveling the problem of consciousness. This is because consciousness itself can be considered an intrinsically mediated phenomenon. Beyond the question of consciousness, this approach can be applied to a variety of issues, but it would be particularly beneficial to phenomenology, which treats consciousness as an essential problem.22

References Blaauw, M. (Ed.). (2013). Contrastivism in philosophy. Routledge. Casati, R., & Varzi, A. C. (1995). Holes and other superficialities. The MIT Press. Chalmers, D. (1995). Facing up to the problem of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2(3), 200–219.

 I deeply appreciate Saulius Geniusas’ valuable comments on the earlier draft of this chapter. The first draft of this paper was presented at the online conference organized by Saulius. I am also grateful to the participants of this conference for their stimulating questions and comments, which were of great help in expanding the original draft. This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP20H00001. 22

11  How to Become Conscious of Consciousness: A Mediation-Focused Approach

211

Chalmers, D. (2018). The meta-problem of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 25(9–10), 6–61. Derrida, J. (1962). L’origine de la géométrie d’Edmund Husserl, Introduction et traduction. PUF. Frankish, K. (Ed.). (2017). Illusionism as a theory of consciousness. Imprint Academic. Held, K. (1966). Lebendige Gegenwart. Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, E. (1973). In I.  Kern (Ed.), Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Dritter Teil: 1929–1935 (Vol. 15 of Husserliana). Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, E. (1983). Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy, first book: General introduction to a pure phenomenology. (F. Kersten, Trans.). Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, E. (1984). In U. Melle (Ed.), Einleitung in die Logik und Erkenntnistheorie. Vorlesungen 1906/07. Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, E. (2002). In S. Luft (Ed.), Zur phänomenologischen Reduktion. Texte aus dem Nachlaß (1926–35) (Vol. 34 of Husserliana). Kluwer. Husserl, E. (2008). Introduction to logic and theory of knowledge: Lectures 1906/07. (C. O. Hill, Trans.). Springer. Irvine, E., & Sprevak, M. (2020). Eliminativism about consciousness. In U.  Kriegel (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of the philosophy of consciousness (pp. 348–370). Oxford University Press. Kandel, E. R., Koester, J. D., Mack, S. H., & Siegelbaum, S. A. (2021). Principles of neural science (6th ed.). McGraw Hill. Maturana, H. R., & Varela, F. J. (1987). The tree of knowledge. Shambhala. Mertens, K. (1996). Zwischen Letztbegründung und Skepsis. Alber. Nishida, K. (1992). An inquiry into the good. Yale University Press. Sartre, J.-P. (2018). Being and nothingness: An essay in phenomenological ontology. (S. Richmond, Trans.). Routledge. Searle, J. R. (1999). Mind, language and society. Basic Books. Sinnott-Armstrong, W. (2008). A contrastivist manifesto. Social Epistemology, 22(3), 257–270. Taguchi, S. (2006). Das Problem des ‘Ur-Ich’ bei Edmund Husserl. Die Frage nach dem selbstverständlichen ‘Nähe’ des Selbst. Springer. Taguchi, S. (2019). Mediation-based phenomenology: Neither subjective nor objective. Metodo, 7(2), 17–44. Tanabe, H. (1963). Tanabe Hajime Zenshu [The complete works] (Vol. 11). Chikuma Shobo. Tanabe, H. (1964). Tanabe Hajime Zenshu [The complete works] (Vol. 13). Chikuma Shobo. Thompson, E. (2015). Waking, dreaming, being. Columbia University Press. Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The embodied mind. The MIT Press. Windt, J.  M., Nielsen, T., & Thompson, E. (2016). Does consciousness disappear in dreamless sleep? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20(12), 871–882. Zahavei, D. (2017). Husserl’s legacy: Phenomenology, metaphysics, and transcendental philosophy. Oxford University Press.

Chapter 12

Beyond Self-Representationalism: A Neo-­Dignāgian Theory of Consciousness Zhihua Yao

In recent years, the self-representational theory of consciousness emerged as a trend that moves beyond the debates between first-order and higher-order theorists, and the HOP (higher-order perception) versus HOT (higher-order thought) debates among higher-order theorists. This theory seems to offer us a model of consciousness that is closer to truth, but it also has limitations. My study will particularly address these limitations and attempt to overcome them by developing a theory of consciousness that is deeply rooted in the Buddhist epistemological tradition. I will illustrate the dual-aspect structure of consciousness and criticize the self-­ representational theory for collapsing the distinction between these aspects. This study will lead to what I call a theory of the accumulation of aspects.

The Self-Representational Theory of Consciousness A focal point of the self-representational theory is that “a mental state is conscious if and only if it represents itself in the right way” (Kriegel & Williford, 2006, 1). This theory combines the attractions of the first-order theory of consciousness, according to which a mental state is conscious if and only if it represents in the right way, and of the higher-order theory of consciousness, according to which a mental state is conscious if and only if it is represented in the right way. Kriegel, one of the main advocates of the self-representational theory of consciousness, has referred to it with different names, e.g., “same-order monitoring theory,” “cross-order integration theory,” and more recently as “self-representational theory.” Gennaro and Van Gulick, although holding a similar view, usually identify themselves as higher-order Z. Yao (*) The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Geniusas (ed.), Varieties of Self-Awareness, Contributions to Phenomenology 121, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39175-0_12

213

214

Z. Yao

theorists. As a result, the self-representational theory cannot stand out against its major rivals and is sometimes classified as a first-order theory,1 or alternatively understood to be a revised higher-order theory.2 Examining these theories carefully, however, we will find that the self-­ representational theory has at least two distinctive points. First, phenomenal consciousness, i.e., the experience of what it is like, has two distinguishable aspects: (1) a qualitative character in virtue of representing environmental features; and (2) a subjective character in virtue of representing the mental state itself (Kriegel, 2009b, 1–2). For instance, when I have a conscious experience of the blue sky, I experience the bluish quality of the sky, which cannot be reduced to the pure physical quality of “blue” and is usually called qualia – the qualitative character of conscious experience. Meanwhile, I also experience the bluish way it is for me, which betrays its subjective character. This subjective character of conscious experience cannot be explained away by such arguments as the transparency of experience and constitutes a key aspect of the mystery of consciousness.3 According to Kriegel (2009b, 14), the distinction between these two aspects of conscious experience can be traced back to Brentano, and his self-representational theory is therefore called a Neo-Brentanian view. In his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, Brentano (1973 [1874]) states: “[Every conscious act] includes within it a consciousness of itself. Therefore, every [conscious] act, no matter how simple, has a double object, a primary and a secondary object. The simplest act, for example the act of hearing, has as its primary object the sound, and for its secondary object, itself, the mental phenomenon in which the sound is heard” (153–154). Kriegel (2009b) holds that “this would commit one to the thesis that all conscious states are self-representing” (14). He also traces Brentano’s view back to Aristotle, who says in his Metaphysics: “knowing, perceiving, believing, and thinking are always of something else, but of themselves on the side” (1074b35–36).4 According to my own study (Yao, 2005, 141–145), a similar view can be found in Dignāga’s Pramāṇasamuccayavṛtti (I.1.9–11), where he argues for the distinction between the subjective aspect (svābhāsa) and the objective aspect (viṣayābhāsa) of cognition and further unfolds the subtlety of self-awareness (svasaṃvedana) on the basis of these dual aspects. This first point, to say the least, distinguishes the self-representational theory from the first-order theory. Also known as a representational theory of  For instance, Block (2009) deals with Burge (2006) and Kriegel and Williford (2006), and calls them “a same order account,” probably derived from Kriegel’s “same-order monitoring theory.” 2  This is especially the case with Gennaro (Higher-order theories of consciousness: An anthology. John Benjamins, 2004) and Van Gulick (2004). Kriegel (2007, 50, 61n78) lists many supporters of the self-representational theory, starting with Brentano (1973 [1874]), followed by phenomenologists Lehrer (1996, 1997) and Smith (1986, 1989), and others including Brook and Raymont (2006), Caston (2002), Hossack (2002), Kriegel (2003), and Williford (2006). Close variations of this theory are found in Carruthers (2000, 2006), Gennaro (1996, 2002, 2006), Kobes (1995), Kriegel (2005, 2006), and Van Gulick (2000, 2004). 3  See below for more of a discussion on the transparency of experience. 4  Quoted from Kriegel (2009b, 14), who also thinks that a similar expression in Aristotle’s De Anima III.2 (425b11–7) can be read as endorsing self-representationalism. 1

12  Beyond Self-Representationalism: A Neo-Dignāgian Theory of Consciousness

215

consciousness, the first-order theory holds the thesis of the transparency of experience: the only introspectively accessible properties of conscious experiences are their representational properties (Kriegel, 2009b, 3n2). Accordingly, this theory focuses only on the qualitative character of conscious experience and ignores its subjective character. Second, a mental state becomes conscious through the representational relations between its proper parts. The mental state as a whole constituted by these parts is a complex rather than a sum. The self-representation of the mental state itself is realized by the representational relations between these parts. There are divergent views on such a part-whole relation. For a mental state M and its representation M*, Gennaro (1996, 2006) holds that M* is a part of M, whereas Kobes (1995) holds the opposite: M is part of M*. Van Gulick (2000, 2006) holds that M is conscious when it has two parts, one of which represents the other. Kriegel (2009b) seems to agree with Van Gulick in his following formulation: “For any mental state M of a subject S, M is conscious if there are M* and M◊, such that (i) M* is a proper part of M, (ii) M◊ is a proper part of M, (iii) M is a complex M* and M◊, and (iv) M* represents M by representing M◊” (228). This point distinguishes the self-representational theory from the strict higher-order theories such as those of Rosenthal (1986, 1997, 2004, 2005) and Lycan (1996, 2001) who hold that higher-order and first-order states are numerically distinct states and cannot be different parts of the same mental state. Interestingly enough, in the Buddhist epistemological tradition there were also theories that divide a mental state into various different parts as well as intense controversies among the theories that insist on one, two, three, or even four parts of a mental state (Yao, 2005, 121–147). Having clarified the two distinctive points of the self-representational theory, I will focus on two issues. First and foremost, if we define inner awareness as the necessary and sufficient condition for phenomenal consciousness, then how is inner awareness possible? This is the central question for all the contemporary theories of consciousness. In the case of the self-representational theory in particular, how is inner awareness related to the subjective character? How is inner awareness realized through self-representation? As a reductive theory of consciousness, how does the self-representational theory account for phenomenal consciousness in non-­ phenomenal terms? I will examine whether the self-representational theory satisfactorily answered these questions by taking Kriegel’s publications as a target. And I will point out some important difficulties in this “official version” of the self-­ representational theory which will collapse the distinction between qualitative and subjective characters and eventually eliminate phenomenal consciousness. If we admit the particularity of phenomenal consciousness based on phenomenology,5 we should uphold the distinction between qualitative and subjective characters and take it to be the backbone of the structure of phenomenal consciousness. I will introduce a theory traditionally called the “accumulation of aspects” (ākāra-pracaya) to avoid

 Admitting phenomenal consciousness and then accounting for it in non-phenomenal terms is entirely different from not admitting it at all. 5

216

Z. Yao

the difficulties of the self-representational theory and to illustrate the overall structure of mental states.6 The second issue before us is whether the higher-order mental part M* itself is conscious or not. This has been one of the key disagreements between Kriegel and Gennaro, the two main advocates of the self-representational theory. M* plays a key role in making the whole mental state M that contains M* as its part a conscious state, but, ironically, it becomes a dilemma whether this higher-order mental part is conscious or not. If yes, then reductionism fails because it implies that consciousness (now in the form of M*) is irreducible. If no, then it falls into a higher-order theory of consciousness, which has to face the difficulties of an infinite regress. To resolve this dilemma, I will distinguish between a strong and weak sense of consciousness and introduce a theory of the cognition of self-cognition developed by the Buddhist epistemologist Dharmapāla.

How Is Inner Awareness Possible? Different authors have adopted various symbols for mental states and their representations. Throughout this paper, I will use my own system: M1 symbolizes first-order mental states, e.g., seeing the blue sky; and M2 symbolizes their representations, e.g., experiencing the seeing of the blue sky. According to the self-representational theory, M2 is a representational state of M1, therefore it makes M1 a conscious state and itself acts as inner awareness. Now how are M1 and M2 related to each other? A naïve understanding of self-representation tends to hold M1 = M2. This is a strict sense of self-identity and easily misunderstood to be a first-order theory. It also makes self-representation “too cheap,” as if self-identity implies self-­representation. But the representational relation as a causal relation is determined to be anti-­ reflexive, so self-representation cannot simply mean self-identity. For this reason, self-representational theorists tend to hold that M1 ≠ M2. But if M1 is numerically distinct from M2, then it falls into a higher-order theory. Therefore, most self-­ representational theorists take the option of M2 being a part of M1. In my view, first of all, these mathematical equations, as popularly adopted among analytic philosophers, are not sufficient and sophisticated enough to describe phenomenal consciousness, and inevitably create unnecessary difficulties and controversies. If we have to use these equations, then I hold both that M1  =  M2 and M1 ≠ M2. Let me explain. “M1 = M2” makes sense in terms of state. In other words, if both M1 and M2 are taken to refer to a mental state, then their extensions cannot be different. Otherwise we will have two numerically distinct mental states  – a higher-order theory again. Meanwhile, M1 does not equate to M2 (“M1 ≠ M2”) in terms of contents. In other words, M1 and M2, being the same mental state, contain  Historically the term ākāra-pracaya was a label for the Buddhist epistemological theory of Dignāga and Dharmakīrti created by their Mīmāṃsaka opponent Kumārila. See Hattori (1968, 108–109). 6

12  Beyond Self-Representationalism: A Neo-Dignāgian Theory of Consciousness

217

different contents and are distinct only in terms of their contents. Taking the earlier experience of seeing the blue sky as example, the contents of M1 are {seeing + bluish}, and the contents of M2 are {experiencing + {seeing + bluish}}. As far as experiential contents are concerned, the blue sky experienced by a conscious being is distinct from the blue sky as seen by a zombie or in a video camera, in the sense that the former conscious experience has two distinctive characters. The first is the character of “bluish” rather than simply “blue,” and this is its qualitative character or qualia. The second is the very character of “experiencing,” which indicates its subjective character. Both aspects constitute the phenomenal consciousness that we are trying to explain. And if we have to talk in terms of “parts,” then M1 is a part of M2 because a conscious state is richer in contents than an unconscious state and the conscious state M2 should contain the first-order mental state M1 in its entirety. For instance, “seeing the blue sky” is evidently a part of “experiencing the seeing of the blue sky.” This view contradicts the views of Gennaro (1996, 2006), Van Gulick (2000, 2006), and Kriegel (2009b) who all hold that M2 is a part of M1, but Kobes (1995) seems to agree with me that M1 becomes a part of M2 when a mental state is conscious. M2, being the representation of mental state M1, is usually taken to be the key to understanding the mystery of phenomenal consciousness. Now I equate it to unconscious mental state M1 in terms of state; meanwhile, I take it to be richer in contents than M1, therefore containing M1 within itself. Some may not be satisfied with this. It seems that we are not making much progress; the mystery still lies there. Recall the earlier distinction between qualitative and subjective characters. The qualitative character in virtue of representing objective features can be symbolized as O, whereas the subjective character in virtue of representing the mental state itself can be S.  And we use “→” to symbolize a representational relation. Then mental state M1 “seeing the blue sky” can be symbolized as M1 = S1 → O1, and M2 “experiencing the seeing of the blue sky” can be M2 = S2 → O2 = S2 → (S1 → O1). So what happens when a mental state becomes conscious, i.e., from M1 to M2, is as follows: O1 stays the same; S1 together with O1 are represented by S2. Inner awareness is realized through the representational relation between S2 and S1 and is therefore self-representation. It is important to note that O2, the qualitative or objective aspect of M2, is both the subjective and objective aspects of M1. This implies that the qualitative character “bluish” is also contributed by the inner awareness of the mental state. Without inner awareness, we cannot even have the experience of “bluish” that first-order theorists emphasize. Now suppose first-order theory is right about the transparency of experience. That is, in a given experience, one only experiences a qualitative character representing objective features without access to any subjective character. As a result, the subjective aspect of mental experience is eliminated: the unconscious mental state M1 = O1, the conscious mental state M2 = O2 = O1, and therefore M1 = M2. In other words, the contents of the unconscious and conscious states are exactly the same. This leads to two equally unacceptable consequences. One is to eliminate phenomenal consciousness in its entirety, and then even O1 cannot be “bluish” but only

218

Z. Yao

“blue.” The other is to admit all mental states being conscious, a classical Cartesian position. Alternatively, suppose that inner awareness only has to do with subjective aspects. In this case, qualitative or objective aspects are taken to be irrelevant to the self-representation of a given mental state, therefore M1 = S1 and M2 = S2. Since the subjective aspect that does not possess the form of an object within itself remains the same at all times, we have S2 = S1. As a result, M2 = M1. Again, we will have two equally absurd results, either eliminating phenomenal consciousness or taking all mental states to be conscious. As a matter of fact, many self-representational theorists implicitly take this position of viewing inner awareness only from subjective aspects. They admit that the conscious state M2 is a part of the unconscious mental state M1. This implies that M2 is only the self-representation of the subjective aspect of M1. Apparently, the subjective aspect is only a part of the entire mental state M1, which includes at least one more part: the objective aspect. But as I have pointed out above, our experience shows that our conscious states are richer in contents than our unconscious mental states. If we still want to talk about “part,” then the unconscious mental state M1 is a part of the conscious state M2, therefore we have M2 = S2 → O2 = S2 → (S1 → O1). It is true that inner awareness or phenomenal consciousness is possible owing to the fact that the subjective aspect of a mental state is reflectively or pre-reflectively aware of the mental state itself.7 Obviously subjective aspects play a key role here. But it is important to keep in mind that self-representation is not only concerned with subjective aspects, e.g., experiencing of seeing, but also with the entire mental state including its objective aspect, e.g., experiencing of seeing the blue sky. If either aspect is ignored, the distinction between qualitative and subjective characters will collapse, as well as the distinction between conscious and unconscious mental states.

The Accumulation of Aspects Kriegel (2003) once criticized a view similar to mine, which he called an “infinite regress of contents.” He insists that in his theory, “there is no infinite regress of contents, since the M2-content, M3-content, M4-content, etc., collapse into one: they all represent the ground-level state M1” (125). He explicitly admits that the contents of different levels of mental states “collapse into one,” which is exactly what I am arguing against. As I have shown, if the contents of these mental states are identical, that is, if M1 = M2 = M3 = M4… in terms of contents, then it will collapse the distinctions between the subjective and objective aspects of mental states and between conscious and unconscious mental states, and ultimately lead to two unfavorable

 Whether it is reflective or pre-reflective is contributed by the intensity and focus of attention. See below for a discussion of this. 7

219

12  Beyond Self-Representationalism: A Neo-Dignāgian Theory of Consciousness

consequences: either accepting no phenomenal consciousness or admitting all mental states being conscious. The reason Kriegel makes such a move may have to do with his understanding of self-representation as purely concerned with subjective aspects and his fear of infinite regress. As he admits, contemporary phenomenologists including the Heidelberg School, Zahavi (1998), and Drummond (2006) accused Brentano of falling prey to an infinite regress of contents which they saw as an inevitable consequence of Brentano’s distinction between the dual aspects of the mental state (Kriegel, 2003, 125n32). Kriegel’s Neo-Brentanian position sticks to the distinction between dual aspects but tries to get rid of this infinite regress. So he manages to collapse the contents of different levels of mental states into one. But this will eventually collapse the distinction between the dual aspects of the mental state and violate the basic tenet of Brentano and the self-representational theory. In my view, the infinite regress of contents is not a problem to be avoided; rather it is a positive attribute of the self-representational theory, which I call the “accumulation of aspects.” How do we understand the accumulation of aspects as a positive attribute of the self-representational theory? As we have seen, for M1 “seeing the blue sky” and M2 “experiencing the seeing of the blue sky,” we already have the following formulas:

M1  S1  O1



M 2  S2  O2  S2   S1  O1 



Our discussion has been limited to these two levels. Kriegel (2003), when criticizing infinite regress of contents, also limits himself to the second level M2 (126). But theoretically we could have higher levels: M3  S3  O3  S3   S2  O2    S3   S2  O1  

M



4













 S O S  S O S  S  S O 4 4 4 3 3 4 3 2 2





 S  S  S  (S  O 4 3 2 1 1





M n  Sn  O n  Sn   Sn 1  (Sn  2  (S1  O1 ))



These formulas do look like an infinite regress. As Kriegel points out, if the contents of these states are limited to objective aspects, then the contents of M2, M3, and M4 are the contents of the ground-level state M1, that is, O1 all the way down. For him, there is no infinite regress of contents, but the price is that M2, M3, M4, and up to Mn all collapse into one. For the same reason, he cannot even maintain the distinction between M1 and M2 in terms of contents.

220

Z. Yao

However, if the contents of these mental states are not limited to objective aspects, but also include subjective aspects, then, as shown in these formulas, M1, M2, M3, M4, and up to Mn are not going to collapse into one. This is because although the objective aspect is eventually the ground-level O1, the subjective aspects of these mental states are accumulated and amplified. The subjective character of a mental state is intensified through the accumulation. This accumulation of aspects is an important attribute of the self-representational theory, but Kriegel missed it by avoiding the so-called infinite regress of contents. My theory of the accumulation of aspects echoes Hofstadter’s important insight on the nature of consciousness. For Hofstadter (2007), consciousness is an infinite process of self-reference, “a strange loop,” which can be demonstrated by the mutual reflection of a video camera and its monitor that produces an image with infinite loop. We may not be ready to accept the implication of this example that consciousness is a phenomenon prevailing the natural world; still, it is a good way to understand consciousness in terms of self-reference. This should also be a key point for the self-representational theory as self-representation is actually a form of self-reference. My theory of the accumulation of aspects also agrees with Metzinger’s (2005) views on the “infinite regress of self-modeling.” He admits that our conscious experience, or self-modeling in his own terminology, “in terms of its logical structure, is an infinite process” which would generate “a chain of nested system-related mental content, an endless progress of ‘self-containing’, of conscious self-modeling” (25). If our mind is caught up in this infinite regress of mental contents, it would quickly devour all its computational resources and paralyze it for all cognitive and practical purposes. Or, in Dignāga’s words, it would not be able to move on to cognize another object (Yao, 2005, 145). Given this situation, Metzinger proposes that we humans have developed an evolutionary viable strategy to break this self-­ representational loop and to avoid entangling our mental power in endless internal loops of higher-order self-modeling. He calls this the “principle of necessary self-reification.”

Is Inner Awareness Itself Conscious? Let’s turn to the second issue, i.e., whether the representational state M2 (or M*) itself is conscious or not. By resolving this controversial point between Kriegel and Gennaro, I will further elaborate my theory of the accumulation of aspects. My proposal is to distinguish between a strong and weak sense of “consciousness.” By “strong sense,” I mean the central, reflective, and thematic consciousness, whereas the peripheral, pre-reflective, and unthematic consciousness is the weak sense of consciousness. Kriegel (2003, 2006, 2009a), in particular, developed the concept of peripheral consciousness by following the phenomenological tradition in emphasizing pre-reflective and unthematic consciousness. When he insists that M2 (or M*) is conscious, he is talking about this weak sense of consciousness. But in the strong sense of consciousness that Gennaro (2006) is using, it can be seen as unconscious.

12  Beyond Self-Representationalism: A Neo-Dignāgian Theory of Consciousness

221

Even for Gennaro, M* will not stay unconscious at all times. He distinguishes two different states: a world-directed conscious mental state in which M* is unconscious, and introspection in which M* is conscious. The reason that M* becomes conscious in the latter state is because it is represented by another higher-order unconscious mental part M** (Gennaro, 2006, 223). Here M** has come very close to the Buddhist concept of the cognition of self-cognition as developed by Dharmapāla, which is also a higher-order mental part that is conscious of a conscious state (Yao, 2005, 145–147). But the difference is that M** itself is unconscious, but the cognition of self-cognition is conscious by means of self-cognition. An important contribution of Gennaro to the issue is that he provides a unified structure for introspection and world-directed conscious states. If he is willing to give up the demand for the strong sense of consciousness, then his scheme can be incorporated into mine. I start with the more basic world-directed unconscious mental states: 1. World-directed unconscious mental states: M1 = S1 → O1 2. World-directed mental states become conscious via peripheral inner awareness: M2 = S2 → O2 = S2 → (S1 → O1) 3. Introspection that makes inner awareness thematically conscious: M3 = S3 → O3 =  S3 → (S2 → O2) = S3 → (S2 → (S1 → O1)) Here M1 is the sensory state (e.g., seeing the blue sky) that is unconscious in itself. It is owing to the rise of M2 that M1 is a conscious state. M2 itself, being peripherally aware, becomes thematically aware in M3. An important conclusion that can be drawn so far is that there is no clear-cut boundary between unconscious and conscious mental states, peripheral conscious and thematic conscious states. Rather it is a spectrum with different degrees of consciousness. The degree of consciousness or awareness is intensified through the accumulation of aspects. The objective aspects of these states, from unconscious to conscious to introspection, may stay the same without much change, to the best attaining qualitative character (from “blue” to “bluish”). But their subjective aspects are constantly accumulated and amplified, through which a mental state becomes aware, attentive, reflective, and eventually enters into memory. How memory is related to consciousness is another complicated matter. By “memory” we usually mean long-term memory in contrast with short-term and very short-term memory. Our experience shows that being conscious or aware of things or events can, to a certain degree, make them into memories. Once in this long-term memory, theoretically they can be retrieved as often as one likes. Each time we remember a certain thing or event, we not only remember this object, but also the qualitative and subjective characters attached to it. In other words, our memory is not only of objective aspects, e.g., the bluish sky, but also of subjective aspects, e.g., seeing and experiencing.8 Therefore, the structure of memory could be:  Historically, this memory argument was taken to be one of the most important arguments for the dual aspects of cognition and the plausibility of self-awareness in the Buddhist epistemological tradition. See Yao (2005, 141–144). 8

222



Z. Yao

M n  Sn  O n  Sn   Sn 1  (Sn  2  (S1  O1 ))



Here n is variable, depending on how frequently an event or thing enters into one’s memory.

Objections and Replies Before closing, let me respond to at least two possible objections. First, throughout the paper we have been talking about mental states M1, M2, M3, M4, and up to Mn. Now, are they the same or different states? I can reply to this question by adopting the same distinction between state and contents as seen in the case of M1 and M2. Therefore, M1  =  M2  =  M3  =  M4  =  …  =  Mn in terms of state, and M1 ≠ M2 ≠ M3 ≠ M4 ≠ … ≠ Mn in terms of contents. But this is obviously less convincing to the opponent than in the earlier case. I can then retreat to hold that M1 ≠ M2 ≠ M3 ≠ M4 ≠ … ≠ Mn in terms of contents, logical structure, or logical moments. But whether they are the same or different states or temporal moments, I will leave it to the empirical domain. Phenomenology seems to show that in a given moment we can be in any kind of state: memory, introspection, conscious perception, unconscious perception. This means that a given mental state can have more or less contents depending on the intensity of consciousness. If it has more contents, then more of these logically distinct mental states coexist in a temporal moment; if it has less contents, then less of them coexist in a given moment. The second objection may be called an “economic principle.” If a single experience, e.g., introspection or memory, involves multiple subjective aspects, then it seems to violate the economic principle (the simpler the better). This has historically been a charge against the Buddhist theory of the accumulation of aspects by its Mīmāṃsaka opponent Kumārila. In my view, unless we would like to admit the transparency of experience all the way through, even denying the qualitative characters of experience, we have to acknowledge the existence and function of the subjective aspects of experience. As compared with a video camera, our human mind is always perceiving and experiencing more, and therefore is less economic. For better or for worse, we are already in a strange loop, and subjective aspects are going to accumulate and amplify, which makes our conscious life uneconomic but rich.

Conclusion My theory of the accumulation of aspects is deeply rooted in the Buddhist epistemological tradition, especially its founder Dignāga, who has expounded the dual aspects of mental states, the accumulation of aspects, and the memory argument for self-awareness. Therefore, my position can be called a Neo-Dignāgian view. But I

12  Beyond Self-Representationalism: A Neo-Dignāgian Theory of Consciousness

223

have dismantled his idealistic framework, which I think is unhelpful in dealing with the problem of consciousness in the contemporary context. My interpretation thus differs from some contemporary interpreters of Dignāga. For instance, Matilal (1986) tends to regard Dignāga as a first-order theorist whereas Williams (1998) sees him as a higher-order theorist.9 Now as we see, Dignāga’s theory is in between the two extremes and comes closer to the self-representational theory. I also distinguish myself from other self-representational theorists by emphasizing that both subjective and qualitative aspects are represented in a conscious state. This way we can avoid the collapse between these two aspects, and between conscious and unconscious mental states. A key feature of my theory is the accumulation of aspects, which is ignored or rejected in the name of an infinite regress of contents by other self-representational theorists. All these concepts, including the dual aspects of mental states and the accumulation of aspects, serve the purpose of explaining how inner awareness is possible through the self-representation of a mental state. So I am happy to be called a self-representational theorist in the sense of searching for a middle path between first-order and higher-order theories of consciousness.

References Block, N. (2009). Comparing the major theories of consciousness. In M.  Gazzaniga (Ed.), The cognitive neurosciences IV. MIT Press. Brentano, F. (1874/1973). Psychology from an empirical standpoint. Humanities. Brook, A., & Raymont, P. (2006). A unified theory of consciousness. MIT Press. Burge, T. (2006). Reflections on two kinds of consciousness. In Philosophical essays, volume II: Foundations of mind (pp. 392–419). Oxford University Press. Carruthers, P. (2000). Phenomenal consciousness. Cambridge University Press. Carruthers, P. (2006). Conscious experience versus conscious thought. In U. Kriegel & K. Williford (Eds.), Consciousness and self-reference (pp. 299–320). MIT Press. Caston, V. (2002). Aristotle on consciousness. Mind, 111, 751–815. Drummond, J. J. (2006). The case(s) of (self-)awareness. In U. Kriegel & K. Williford (Eds.), Self-­ representational approaches to consciousness (pp. 199–220). MIT Press. Gennaro, R.  J. (1996). Consciousness and self-consciousness: A defense of the higher-order thought theory of consciousness. John Benjamins. Gennaro, R. J. (2002). Jean-Paul Sartre and the HOT theory of consciousness. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 32, 293–330. Gennaro, R.  J. (2006). Between pure self-referentialism and the (extrinsic) HOT theory of consciousness. In U.  Kriegel & K.  Williford (Eds.), Consciousness and self-reference (pp. 221–248). MIT Press. Hattori, M. (1968). Dignāga on perception: Being the Pratyakṣapariccheda of Dignāga’s Pramāṇasamuccaya. Harvard University Press. Hofstadter, D. (2007). I am a strange loop. Basic Books. Hossack, K. (2002). Self-knowledge and consciousness. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 102, 163–181.

 In Yao (2005, 159), I agreed with Williams (1998) in taking Dignāga to be a higher-order theorist.

9

224

Z. Yao

Kobes, B. W. (1995). Telic higher-order thoughts and Moore’s paradox. Philosophical Perspectives, 9, 291–312. Kriegel, U. (2003). Consciousness as intransitive self-consciousness: Two views and an argument. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 33, 103–132. Kriegel, U. (2005). Naturalizing subjective character. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 71, 23–57. Kriegel, U. (2006). The same order monitoring theory of consciousness. In U. Kriegel & K. Williford (Eds.), Self-representational approaches to consciousness (pp. 143–170). MIT Press. Kriegel, U. (2007). Philosophical theories of consciousness: Contemporary western perspectives. In P.  D. Zelazo, M.  Moscovitch, & E.  Thompson (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of consciousness (pp. 35–66). Cambridge University Press. Kriegel, U. (2009a). Self-representationalism and phenomenology. Philosophical Studies, 143, 357–381. Kriegel, U. (2009b). Subjective consciousness: A self-representational theory. Oxford University Press. Kriegel, U., & Williford, K. (Eds.). (2006). Self-representational approaches to consciousness. MIT Press. Lehrer, K. (1996). Skepticism, lucid content, and the metamental loop. In A. Clark, J. Ezquerro, & J. M. Larrazabal (Eds.), Philosophy and cognitive science (pp. 73–94). Kluwer. Lehrer, K. (1997). Self-trust: A study of reason, knowledge, and autonomy. Oxford University Press. Lycan, W. G. (1996). Consciousness and experience. MIT Press. Lycan, W. G. (2001). A simple argument for a higher-order representation theory of consciousness. Analysis, 61, 3–4. Matilal, B.  K. (1986). Perception: An essay on classical Indian theories of knowledge. Clarendon Press. Metzinger, T. (2005). Précis: Being no one. Psyche, 11(5), 1–35. Rosenthal, D. M. (1986). Two concepts of consciousness. Philosophical Studies, 49, 329–359. Rosenthal, D. M. (1997). A theory of consciousness. In N. Block, O. Flanagan, & G. Guzeldere (Eds.), The nature of consciousness (pp. 729–753). MIT Press. Rosenthal, D. M. (2004). Varieties of higher-order theory. In R. J. Gennaro (Ed.), Higher-order theories of consciousness: An anthology (pp. 17–44). John Benjamins. Rosenthal, D. M. (2005). Consciousness and mind. Oxford University Press. Smith, D. W. (1986). The structure of (self-) consciousness. Topoi, 5, 149–156. Smith, D. W. (1989). The circle of acquaintance. Kluwer Academic Publishers. Van Gulick, R. (2000). Inward and upward: Reflection, introspection, and self-awareness. Philosophical Topics, 28(2), 275–305. Van Gulick, R. (2004). Higher-order global states HOGS: An alternative higher-order model of consciousness. In R. J. Gennaro (Ed.), Higher-order theories of consciousness: An anthology (pp. 67–92). John Benjamins. Van Gulick, R. (2006). Mirror mirror  – Is that all? In U.  Kriegel & K.  Williford (Eds.), Self-­ representational approaches to consciousness (pp. 11–39). MIT Press. Williams, P. (1998). The reflexive nature of awareness: A Tibetan Madhyamaka defence. Curzon Press. Williford, K.  W. (2006). The self-representational structure of consciousness. In U.  Kriegel & K.  Williford (Eds.), Self-representational approaches to consciousness (pp.  111–142). MIT Press. Yao, Z. (2005). The Buddhist theory of self-cognition. Routledge. Zahavi, D. (1998). Brentano and Husserl on self-awareness. Études Phénomènologiques, 27–28, 127–169.

Index

A Absolute, the, 189 Accumulation, 122, 158, 193, 198, 213, 215, 218–223 Actuality and possibility, 37, 39 and the self, 42 Adorno, T., 156 Alterity, 126 Animal, 9, 18, 31, 148, 153, 155, 159–166, 168, 169 Anthropomorphism, 147 Anticipation, 33 Appearance, 7, 8, 16, 20, 22, 23, 73, 75–78, 85, 88, 90, 92, 94, 97, 136, 139, 142–144 Arendt, H., 138, 139, 147 Aristotle, 148, 179, 214 Atmosphere, 115–116, 153, 155, 166 Attention co-, 51 in-, 51 and zoning- and tuning-out, 51 Augustine, 123, 144 Autonomy and dependence, 102, 105, 114–115, 117 Awareness ascriptive, 18, 21, 23 concordant, 17, 23 Eastern, 174 ecological, 153–169 embodied, 14, 102–104, 108, 113 fictional, 3–24 and group membership, 126–128, 132, 133 historical, 75, 121–133

implicit and explicit, 52 impossible and possible, 8, 17 kinesthetic, 85–98 and perception, 15, 18, 110, 111, 169, 178 pre-reflective, 47, 48, 59, 66–68, 70, 78–80, 82, 101–117, 122, 133, 190 as realization, 157, 173, 174, 176, 180, 184, 190, 191 reflective, 103, 107, 111, 123, 133, 177 relative and absolute, 13, 17 and remembrance, 28 self-, 3, 28, 47, 48, 52–54, 56, 59 sexual, 101–117 social, 31, 126, 131, 133 and space, 86 and the universal, 180–183, 186 Western, 121, 154, 155, 159, 168 world-, 52, 141 B Bachelard, G., 45, 49, 55, 56 Background, 91, 106, 107, 122, 124, 129, 130, 140–142, 198 Becoming and being, 10, 30 and life, 31, 33–36, 38–42 Belonging, 12, 20, 32, 124, 128, 131–133, 136 Bentham, J., 162 Bergson, H. and duration, 31, 33 Body, the and artifacts, 69 autonomy of, 96

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Geniusas (ed.), Varieties of Self-Awareness, Contributions to Phenomenology 121, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39175-0

225

226 Body, the (cont.) and concrete and abstract movement, 103, 106–108 and constitution, 20, 97 existed-, 71 expressive, 113 extensions, 69 and the gaze, 67, 79 ghostly, 18, 21, 24 image, 65–67, 70–74, 76–78, 80–82, 106 lived, 21, 67, 70, 90–92, 94, 95 and memory, 66 Merleau-Ponty on, 4, 101–117 and psychoanalysis, 70 Sartre on, 71–73, 79, 81 schema, 65–67, 69–72, 74, 78–82, 103, 106–109, 116 seen, 11, 14, 20, 66, 67, 71–78, 80–82, 92, 96, 115 and others, 70, 71, 73, 115 unity of, 18, 20–22, 108 Buber, M., 185 C Chiasm, 105 Cogito, the, 102 Community and proximity, 74 and responsibility, 132, 166 Conrad, T., 45, 47, 50, 51, 53–55 Consciousness absence/loss of, 196, 198, 205 co-, v embodied, 102, 108, 117 explicit and non-explicit, 197 hard problem of, 209 and idealism, 206 image-, 70, 176, 182, 184, 220 and mediation, 193–210 meta-problem of, 209 non-thetic, 107 orders of, 4 perceptual, 29, 102 phantasy-, 6, 51, 54–56 pure, 11, 87, 101, 103, 104, 108, 111, 117, 143 reflective, 101–104, 107, 111, 177, 194, 197, 202, 204, 220, 221 science of, 46, 47 self-, 11, 40, 72, 90, 140, 143, 149 self-representational theory of, 213 strong and weak sense of, 216, 220 as substance, 205, 207, 208

Index thetic and non-thetic, 107 time-, 30, 90, 95, 101, 103, 117, 121, 149, 153, 181, 184, 221 unconscious, 195, 196, 217, 218, 220, 221 Constitution, 20, 24, 85–88, 90, 91, 94, 95, 97, 110, 127, 147 Contingency of the self, 14, 15 Contrastivism, 194 Creativity, 176 Cyborg(ism), 82 D Darwinism, 31 Dasein, 4, 101, 103, 104 Daydreaming (DD) and absorption, 50, 51, 55 and activity and passivity, 54, 58 and displacement, 53–55 and neurology, 46, 57 pathological and non-pathological, 52, 58, 59 and shame, 55 and the spectator, 56 and the subject, 56 See also Attention; Awareness Death and immortality, 37 mortality, 35 Dedekind, R., 174, 177, 178, 186–188 Democracy, 139, 147 Derrida, J., 162, 204 Descartes, R., 65, 111, 144, 155, 174, 194 Desire Determination and indeterminacy, 180 self-, 38 Differentiation and the individual, 31, 32, 35, 146 self-, 31, 144 Dignāga, 214, 216, 220, 222, 223 Dilthey, W., 123, 124, 132, 133 Dostoevsky, F., 183, 185 Dreams lucid and non-lucid, 46, 48–50, 53 See also Daydreaming (DD) E Ecology, 153, 167 Ego alter-, 125

Index Cartesian, 102, 111 dormant, 28 -less, 102 phantasizing, 54 splitting of, 54, 55 Empiricism, 135, 136, 141, 142 Enlightenment, the, 124, 135, 138, 156, 157, 163 Environment and responsibility, 155, 163, 167 as the other, 161, 164, 167 Epistemology Buddhist, ix, x, 213, 215, 216, 221, 222 Epoché, 5 Essence, 5–7, 12, 14, 16, 18, 23, 33, 104, 130, 140, 141, 144, 151, 155–157, 159, 161–164, 191 Ethics Existence and ambiguity, 106–108, 114, 116 bipolar, 101, 103, 105, 113, 114, 116 Experience absorbed or displaced, vii, 47 intuitive and non-intuitive, 46 lived, 7, 12, 28, 65, 67, 71, 77, 107, 135, 178, 182, 183 original and reproductive, 46 pure, 7, 8, 72, 175, 176, 183, 214 religious, 130, 183 stream of, 14 and time, 16 F Facticity, 31, 33, 40, 101–103, 105, 108, 115–117, 143, 148, 149 Feminism, 127 Fichte, J.G., 144, 174, 176 Fink, E., 3, 86, 163 Freedom negative liberty, 141 participatory, 141 Freud, S., 56, 58 G Gadamer, H., 136, 139, 140, 146, 147 Gestalt, 106, 130 Gödel, K., ix, 174, 175, 187, 188, 190, 191 Ground and groundlessness, 41, 183, 184 ungrounding, 187

227 H Habermas, J., 147, 156 Habit and kinesthesis, 96 Haecceitas, 149 Hegel, G.W.F., 114, 121, 137–139, 146, 150, 176 Heidegger, M., 3, 4, 87, 101, 103, 104, 112, 117, 121–125, 132, 144, 145, 147, 149, 154, 156, 163, 178, 190 Henry, M., 4 Herder, J.G., 137 Hermeneutics, 86, 136, 139, 145–147, 154 History deep-, 160, 168 historicity, 124, 132, 137, 148–150 and sedimentation, 132, 159 shared and communal, 133 of species, 160, 168 Hobbes, T., 45 Holism, 149 Horkheimer, M., 156 Humanity and animals, 160, 161 as geological force, 157, 158, 166, 168 and nature, 158 as species, 157–160, 166, 168 Hume, D., 45, 144, 150 Husserl, E., 5, 45, 51, 54, 57, 58, 67, 85–98, 101, 103–105, 108, 111, 112, 154, 156, 174, 182, 183, 190, 200 Hyle hyletic, 94 and kinesthesis, 89–95 I Idealism, 32, 123, 136, 139, 149 Ideation and phantasy, 6, 8 Identity historical, 131 personal, 124, 128, 129, 131 social, 127, 129 and temporality, 131 Immanence and transcendence, 36 Incorporation habit-, 66 object-, 66, 69, 71, 77 Indeterminacy See also Determination

228 Individual anti-individualism, 136 and communities, 125, 128, 130–132, 137, 166 and group membership, 126 and history, 38, 40, 129–131, 135, 137, 141, 142, 146, 150, 159 individuation, 7, 136, 141, 142, 144, 146, 148, 149 the law of, 40–42 and nature, 38, 114, 122, 129, 139–142, 175 and personality, 32, 38, 147 quasi- and actual-, 6–8 relational, 31, 135–140, 142–144, 149 and romanticism, 32, 146 and society, 32, 127, 130, 136, 139–142, 146–148 Individuation, viii, 7, 135–151 Infinite, the, ix, 7, 8, 121, 141, 174, 177, 178, 185–191, 218–220 Instinct, 87, 110, 114, 137, 149 Intentionality of act, 101, 104–105, 108 operative, 102, 104–106, 108 pre-, 102, 117 sexual, 102, 108–112, 116 and structure, v we-, viii, 125–128, 130 Interiority and Romanticism, 32 Intersubjectivity, 125–126, 133 Intuition ism, 149

Index and proprioception, 88, 90, 92, 93 and recollection, 95 and the self, 91 and self-awareness, vii, 85–98 and space, 88, 90 and spontaneity, 90 transcendentality, 90 Knowledge, 5, 87, 88, 90, 104, 106, 108, 115, 122, 131, 142, 146, 149, 151, 156, 164, 179, 181, 188 Kyoto School, the, vi, ix, 178, 193

J James, W., 45, 47, 55 Judgment moral, 104 propositional, 176, 180, 181 universals, 179–181

L Learning, 80, 93, 141, 143 Levinas, E., 165 Liberalism, 136, 139, 141, 147 Life and alienation, 30, 42, 138 and authenticity, 42 bare, 161 concrete, 14, 18, 31, 36, 38, 40, 101, 144, 165, 166 and culture, 30, 34, 36, 37, 146, 155 and duty, 31, 42, 43 and exploitation, 156, 161 and finitude, 33, 34, 37, 42, 150, 151, 186 and the individual, 31, 35, 38, 40, 42, 43, 140, 141, 144 lifeworld, 87, 98, 137 and meanings, 30, 32–34, 36, 103, 105, 112, 124, 150, 162 and modern, 30, 31, 155 -nexus, 137, 141, 143, 147 and the past, 27, 28, 34, 123 and structure, 14, 32, 101, 103, 105, 110, 123, 141, 144, 146, 147, 149, 150, 161, 167 and transience, 34–36, 38, 42 and wholeness, 27, 29, 40, 123, 124 Locke, J., 45 Lukács, G., 30, 136, 138, 139, 147

K Kant, I., 40, 43, 67, 104, 111, 139, 144, 174, 179, 181, 183, 195 Kinesthesis and appearance, 90, 92, 97 and the ego, 20, 97, 98, 191 and habit, 98 and hyle, 89, 92, 93 and mental acts, 96 and phantasy, 95

M Marx, K. and class consciousness, 127 Meaning the logic of wholes and parts, 124 and teleology, 30 transvaluation, 34 Memory body, 66 long- and short-term, 221

Index and nostalgia, 27, 129 societal, 130 and wistfulness, 27 Merleau-Ponty, M., 45, 48, 49, 58, 59, 65–68, 70, 79, 82, 87 Mill, J.S., 141, 150 Mind-wandering, 45, 46 Mirroring, 174, 176, 178, 179, 185, 188 Modernity and the Anthropocene, 155–160, 169 and relativism, 30 Myth, 36 N Nagel, T., 5 Narrative pre-existing, 124 Nation, the nationalism, 138 Naturalism, 136, 138, 139, 148 Nature and science, 144, 159 subjugation and control of, 155 Nietzsche, F., 31, 34, 144 Nishida Kitarō, 173 Noema noetic, 184 Normativity, 156 Nothing absolute, 174, 179, 181, 183, 184, 186, 188, 189, 191 O Object -ification, 76, 93, 137, 180 incorporation of, 66, 75, 81 hyper-, 154 Organicism and society, 148 Other, the absolute, 184, 185 See also Self Ought, the, 39, 42 P Pascal, B., 144 Perception quasi-, 96 and space, 94 Personality and constancy, 124 Perspective, 4, 71, 87, 90, 94, 123–125, 137, 139, 140, 142, 144, 145,

229 147–149, 153–155, 163, 167–169, 178, 179, 185, 199, 201–203 Phantasy, 5–8, 11, 12, 23, 24, 92, 98 Phenomenology eco-, 163 as eidetic science, 5, 6 and empirical sciences, 5 genetic, 104 and geometry, 5, 6, 8 and interdisciplinarity, 4, 5 post-, 66, 68 and reduction, 101, 105, 125 Phenomenon transitional, 45, 48 Philosophy Buddhist, vi comparative, ix Indian, vi Japanese, 173 Kyoto School, 173 of life, 29, 30, 138–140, 142, 151 of mind, 4, 5, 65 post-Kantian, 173 practical, 138, 140, 151 Western, 121 Place and universal, 180 Plato and the allegory of the cave, 3, 4, 9 Positivism, 135, 136, 142, 148 Possibility and impossibility, vi, vii, 29, 30, 37, 39 Presence, 12, 19, 20, 22, 38, 73, 74, 162, 185 Presentation and presentification, 46, 47, 50, 96 Proprioception, 79, 80, 88–94, 97, 98 Protention, 129 Psychoanalysis, 123 R Recollection, 16, 28, 95, 98, 130 Reduction pathological, 102 phenomenological, 101, 112, 125 Reflection mediation, 200, 201 pre-, v, vi, 47, 48, 66–68, 70, 78–80, 82, 101–117, 121, 122, 128, 133, 144, 148, 174, 175, 190, 197, 200, 201, 209, 218, 220 reflexivity, 156

230 Relation -ality, 33, 141 self-, 176, 182, 183 Relativism, 30, 147, 150, 151 Religion and Christianity, 37 pantheism, 147 Responsibility and diversity, 163 to the environment, 160, 162, 163, 168 Retention, 130 Ricoeur, P., 123, 131, 166 Royce, J., 174, 176–178, 185, 186, 188, 189 S Sartre, J.-P., 4, 45, 50, 58, 65, 71–73, 79, 81, 101, 121, 125, 206 Schelling, F.W.J., 138 Schiller, F., 136 Schleiermacher, F., 135–137, 141, 142, 147, 151 Schopenhauer, A., 31, 144 Searl, J., 5, 195, 196 Sedimentation, 29, 67, 117, 132, 159 Self actual and fictional, 12, 14, 15, 24 anonymous, 12 and autobiography, 144, 145 bodily, 4, 18, 20, 21, 24, 65–71, 73, 75, 77–80, 82, 90 corporeal, 65, 67, 86, 98 and de-centering the human, 162 ecological, 153–169 emotive, 182 finite, 186 historical, 30, 33, 39, 40, 121–133 -hood, 14, 23, 24, 121, 123–125, 133, 161 impossible, 8, 15, 17 kinesthetic, 85–98 minimal, 47, 121, 146, 148 -mirroring, 174, 176, 177, 185, 190, 191 moral, 182, 183 and narrative, 133 noumenal, 31, 40, 41, 182, 183 and other(s), 24, 71, 73, 124, 133, 175, 183, 185 sexual, 101–117 situated, 136, 143–145 social, 146 transcendental, 183 -variation, 11, 15, 17, 23, 24, 28

Index variations of, 11, 15, 23, 24, 28 and we-intentionality, 125–128, 130 Sensation bodily, 69, 90 haptic, 91 kinesthetic, 89, 90, 92 and localization, 20, 90, 92 presentational, 89 and spaces, 90 tactile, 20 visual, 20, 91 Sense of movement, 78, 88 muscular, 88 types of, 182 Sensing, 20, 91, 93, 98, 122 Sexuality, 109–117 Simmel, G., 27–43, 136, 137, 145 Skepticism, 142, 143, 150, 151, 200 Space and perception, 86 Spencer, H., 31 Spinoza, 141, 147 State, 5, 8, 12, 18, 31, 35, 37, 70, 104, 111, 121, 122, 136–139, 141, 146, 148, 153–155, 163, 164, 166, 174, 175, 179, 181, 185, 189, 191, 213–223 Subjectivity body-, 102, 105, 106, 108–111, 117 inter-, 125–126, 133 we-, 126–128, 132 T Tanabe, H., 193, 194, 206, 207, 209 Technology, 68, 96, 156, 163 Temporality chronological, 33 and duration, 28, 33 and eternity, 36 and the future, 33–35, 43, 128, 130 and history, 128, 131 and narrative, 131 and the past, 27, 28, 33, 34, 128, 130 and the present, 27, 28, 33–35, 37, 130, 131 Thematization non-, 4, 47, 201 Transcendence and immanence, 33, 34, 36, 38, 42 and life, 34, 35, 37, 38, 42 transcendental attitude, 3, 112 Truth and illusion, 10

Index V von Goethe, J.W., 136, 139, 140, 146, 147 Vulnerability and responsibility, 155, 163–169

231 W Weber, M., 30, 137, 145 Wittgenstein, L., 189–191 World and place, 165