I don’t get why people think we can’t observe ourselves, or the “I” - isn’t observing all it takes to observe what it feels like to be an observer? Isn’t that why Descartes said we know ourselves better than that which impresses itself upon us? Just because you can’t look or hear etc., the attributes… doncha, though? Isn’t observing the “I” or subject just the feeling of observing without anything impressing itself on us, or that common feeling that you feel in every instance of observing? Is there something that I’m missing? Maybe I just need to point out that sometimes when you’re observing, you’re not even aware you’re observing because you’re kind of spaced out (brain fog?), but other times when you’re observing, you’re totally conscious and aware and in the moment. The difference between those kinds of observing says a lot, I think.
Just because (If…) we cannot make it happen doesn’t mean we are strangers (Camus) to it.
In psychotherapeutic instruction this was sometimes referred to as the “observing ego”. But who is this oberver, who observes the embodies self as an object? Does anyone observe the obserever? Is it not the cae that the observer knows all that is known and yet is unknown to anyone?
Article Dr. Z assigned suggests maybe Husserl gets it. However, this margin scribble occured to me & I wonder if Kant would feel correctly represented.
Directedness reminds me of a frog catching a fly. Attentional intension. But nonattentional is like a dream catcher (asleep) or spiderweb (awake).
A bit of commentary to introduce: We can freely opt, with every chisling --modifying-- choice, to restructure our essence (which we messed up with choices that chiseled --modified-- it into something that was not originally intended) back into resembling the essential (the original/first/eternal intention/essence) grounded in a God who always treats the Other as Self [exists his essence - is the “in-itself-for-itself,” (358, BAN) as Sartre would say]. This is what we do when we are choosing/acting in good faith, according to Christians.
[BAN] Being and Nothingness (Sartre). Existentialism Basic Writings, Indianapolis/Cambridge: Charles Guignon and Derk Pereboom, Hackett Publishing Company, 2001.
Something tells me I have missed some things along the way thanks to my atrocious memory. But obviously I didn’t miss them that much if I remember that I missed them. If that makes any sense.