Sartre agrues in Being and Nothingness that in order to be conscious of an object, there must be consciousness of consciousness of that object, for if there was not consciousness of being conscious then there would be unconsciousness. He continues by saying however, that if we take “consciousness of that object” to be a knowledge, then to be conscious of that knowledge, there needs to be another “higher” consciousness and so on to infinity.
To avoid this infinite regress, he defines a pre-reflective cogito, or an immediate consciousness. He say of this:
This seems to me to be a consciousness that “is” and because it is immediate, does not allow any reflection on it as an object, and therefore as itself does not involve an infinite regress. However, I am having difficulty elucidating what this actually is. In the case of perception, during non-reflective periods, as I am typing this on my screen I am sure that I have “sense” of objects on my periphery, but I would not say I am conscious of them in ordinary circumstances. So, I don’t believe that this “sense” would class as the pre-reflective cogito. However, say I drop my keys and pick them up, without specifically thinking “I have dropped my keys and need to look for them on the ground and pick them up”, I am still conscious of the keys as perception, i.e. within my active consciousness.
So I guess I would call the “keys case” pre-reflective cogito, but the “periphery vision case” non-conscious. In order to differentiate between these two cases, there must therefore be something additional going on in the “keys case”, i.e. an immediate consciousness of perception and perception concurrently.
Would this seem like a reasonable analysis to anyone who is familiar with Being and Nothingness?
I’ve been stuggling with the wikipedia article on B&N (it’s very confusing), and although I don’t have an obvious answer to your question, this “consciousness of consciousness” reminds me of my own philosophy of how the mind comes to conceive of a “self”.
For any perception or experience the mind has, it is automatically registered with the idea of an “I” having had that perception or experience. For example, if I see a fluffy white cloud in the sky, this is registered not only as “there is a fluffy white cloud” but as “I see a fluffy white cloud”. Who knows how the mind constructs this “I” but it always gets inserted into the knowledge gleened from empirical experience.
Sartre’s “consciousness of consciousness” may simply be this “I” that comes along with every one of our conscious moments. So to be conscious of a chair, say, is not only to be aware of the chair, or even the perception of the chair, but to be aware that there is an “I” who is perceiving the chair. In other words, “consciousness of consciousness” may mean simply “consciousness of ‘I’” and what the “I” is conscious of.
Thanks for the reply. That wikipedia article is an ok introduction, but I’m not sure if the author has encapsulated what was meant by the actual text.
You may be right, but I think I may have a different view. I believe the concept of “I” comes only from the reflective consciousness, i.e. with consciousness as it’s object. For instance, think about yourself pulling a chair out from a table to sit on it. In most, non-reflective cases you will be conscious of the chair, but not actually precisely thinking “I am pulling out this chair”. However, this reflective consciousness in being conscious of a past consciousness, is still a pre-reflective cogito on the appearance of the past consciousness. This is what I believe consciousness (of) consciousness refers to.
Now, that wikipedia article talks about the pre-reflective consciousness of the table and says it should be denoted as “consciousness (of) consciousness of the table”. However, I think this is actually a designation of reflective consciousness, i.e. reflecting on being conscious of the table. In my reading of the early stages of Being and Nothingness, I would think that the pre-reflective, immediate consciousness of the table is “consciousness (of) the table” or “consciousness (of) the perception of the table”. I may have left out a level somewhere though.
When Sartre talks about the consciousness of pleasure, he says consciousness of pleasure is pleasure, i.e. consciousness (of) pleasure. As for the immediate reflective consciousness on the consciousness (of) pleasure, I believe Sartre intended it to be written as “consciousness (of) consciousness (of) pleasure”. My only problem now is how to differentiate between consciousness (of) pleasure and consciousness (of) the table. Do they need to be differentiated, or in other words, are they of the same type of being?
Great question! I was just thinking about Sartre’s “prereflective cogito” not too long ago, nice to see others struggling through B&N as well! What you’re dealing with in terms of the different modalities of conscious existence is the problem of self-relation, that is, being for-itself is not identical to a consciousness in-itself. That is, there IS no pure, unreflective consciousness which is a total awareness or a pure being or something like that; Sartre defends a very particular view of the nature of consciousness being such that it IS what it’s not and it’s NOT what it is-- which means that, to take your example, that my consciousness (of) my pleasure can’t ultimately (prereflectively anyway) be distinguished, much in the same way my phenomenological apperception of a table is NOT the same as a consciousness (of) the table. “Being” is not consciousness, right? Consciousness is a special ontological category, and going with the preceding remarks, we have to assert an affirmative answer to your question: do we need to separate consciousness-(of)-pleasure from a consciousness-(of)-matter, etc? But at this point, we’re still only dealing with the prereflective cogito, where I don’t encounter my SELF directly in my reflection, as it were, only the OBJECT of consciousness (whether taken to be a table, a memory of a table, the pleasure of a youthful memory of my grandmother’s table); in other words, I think for Sartre, at least insofar as we’re talking about reflection (self or otherwise,) there is no consciousness separate of intentionality, that is, consciousness of a pleasure is already pleasure; how could we talk about your pleasure unless you were aware of it – at least with emotions, anyway, Sartre says they have a “magical” ability to color our entire reality, so an emotion really only exists to the degree it’s influencing us without us being aware of it; we may not know we’re aware of a pleasure, as it were, perhaps until it’s taken away – and there’s a similar answer to the table. Not that the table doesn’t exist unless there’s consciousness observing and reflecting on it, but without awareness of it, the table is purely un-differentiated, it slips into the background of “non-being” (from the perspective of a conscious observer) and so it has no existence independent of the rest of being, at least without the phenomenological interference of prereflective self-awareness.
Great question! I was just thinking about Sartre’s “prereflective cogito” not too long ago, nice to see others struggling through B&N as well! What you’re dealing with in terms of the different modalities of conscious existence is the problem of self-relation, that is, being for-itself is not identical to a consciousness in-itself.
After all, for Sartre, there is NO pure, unreflective consciousness which is a total awareness or has true being or anything like that. Sartre propounds a very particular view of the nature of consciousness being such that: it IS what it’s not and it’s NOT what it is. To take your example, this means that since my consciousness doesn’t just exist in-itself, it follows that my consciousness (of) my pleasure can’t ultimately be decomposed into “consciousness” and “pleasure”–they become one thing (pleasure, consciousness-of-pleasure,) much in the same way my phenomenological apperception of a table is NOT the same as a consciousness (of) the table. “Being” is not consciousness, right?
Consciousness is a special ontological category, and going with the preceding remarks, we have to assert an affirmative answer to your question: do we need to separate consciousness-(of)-pleasure from a consciousness-(of)-matter, etc? Yes, but at this point, we’re still only dealing with the prereflective cogito, where I don’t encounter my SELF directly in my reflection, as it were, only the OBJECT of consciousness (whether taken to be a table, a memory of a table, the pleasure of a youthful memory of my grandmother’s table); in other words, I think for Sartre, at least insofar as we’re talking about reflection (self or otherwise,) there is no consciousness separate of intentionality, that is, consciousness of a pleasure is already pleasure; how could we talk about your pleasure unless you were aware of it – at least with emotions, anyway, Sartre says they have a “magical” ability to color our entire reality, so an emotion really only exists to the degree it’s influencing us without us being aware of it; we may not know we’re aware of a pleasure, as it were, perhaps until it’s taken away – and there’s a similar answer to the table.
Not that the table doesn’t exist unless there’s consciousness observing and reflecting on it, but without awareness of it, the table is purely un-differentiated, it slips into the background of “non-being” (from the perspective of a conscious observer) and so it has no existence independent of the rest of being, at least without the phenomenological interference of prereflective self-awareness.
Something like this should raise eyebrows every time it’s heard. I find myself guilty of offering the benefit of the doubt to those who propose that which should be immediately denounced as logically contradictory. I always think “Maybe he’s got some way of justify such a bold claim”. I’ve always found Sartre to be extremely difficult to parse. I remember this particular bit - that conscious is what it’s not and is not what it is - and although I can’t remember the exact text in which this is explained, I believe it goes something along the lines of: conscious perceives itself to be that which it was just a instant ago. That is, consciousness, in its attempt to self-reflect, can’t ultimately be self-directed, but it must create a memory or model of itself as it takes itself to be in the moment, and reflect upon that instead. If this is correct, then the right way to interpret Sartre’s “consciousness is what it’s not” is to say that consciousness believes itself to be something which it really is not. This is much less contradictory.
But, like I said, I have great difficulty in parsing through Sartrian texts. I’m sure the man had something deep and profound to express, but I think he struggled in trying to get it out (maybe all those attempts to self-reflect wound him up in knots).
Let me try to understand what you mean by that. Sartre, as I understand him, says consciousness is relational and is directed in its intentionality towards something, i.e. being. This being is proved to be objective in that it must exist outside of the intentionality of consciousness for consciousness to be directed toward it. Consciousness can not bring it into being either, as being does not “come into” being, this is absurd. Consciousness can affirm non-being however, which proceeds being. But because consciousness is directed towards being, does this mean that consciousness is necessarily not being? After all Sartre says:
Or does this mean that if consciousness is not being if it is directed towards being other than itself? I may have missed your point, if so, let me know.
Yes, and it’s only an “object” insofar as there’s a “subject” perceiving it. Besides that, all we can talk about are Being (i.e., EVERY thing) and Nothingness.
Yes, of course, and we (and all of being along with us) are always becoming. In this difference there really is an entire philosophy: what does it mean to become who we are? How do we have better desires as to what to become? How do manage to always turn into ourselves (or other people)? How do we avoid lapsing into bad faith? How can we become free? These are the questions Sartre is asking; you’re on the right track.
Ah, I see what your issue is. OK, you’re got “consciousness” on one hand; on the other, you’ve got two huge containers labelled “being” and “nothingness.” Which container does consciousness fit into?
But it’s a trick question, isn’t it? There’s no right container for consciousness: it’s always becoming something else. As soon as we put it into the “Nothing” container, it becomes something. As soon as we say, OK, consciousness exists, suddenly it completely disappears from our grasp. This is why Sartre must talk about consciousness not as a static system but as a dynamic process, or even more revolutionarily, as an [i]event[i] of becoming.
Yes, this is right: consciousness is directed towards another being than itself: itself. Consciousness is not identical to itself. Once again, it is what it isn’t, and it isn’t what it is. If consciousness is in question, there must be something which (a) exists and (b) is not consciousness. This doesn’t mean “consciousness doesn’t exist”; this is, of course, a very unstable proposition. Sartre knows that identity isn’t a fact or an object at all: since he’s a phenomenologist, he wants to argue it’s an intuition, a consistency and persistence–not a divine or omniscient apperception. Being is broken; existence is fragmented; there is no ultimate stability or consistency which could bring order to the universe. The best we can do is make the best of what we’ve got, and this already raises the entire question of ethics to the forefront. Consider to what degree the primary ethical question (“What to do?”) fits in line with the existentialist refrain: Decide (what to do)!
Yeah, I know, right? It’s so non-intuitive. I also really liked how you put this: it should raise eyebrows. This has at least two important aspects, right? First, and most important, that statements like these are tactical, they’re strategic, they’re jargon-y rhetoric which helps to legitimate and establish the style of analysis Sartre wants to do… but we can’t forget what he’s doing, which is trying to get us to independently develop, out of our own responsibility to the other, a space for empancipatory political subjectivity. He wants us to re-invent post-Marxist social and psychological critique ourselves, and this is what bad faith is really all about. This gets to the second point of statements like the one ought to raise eyebrows. The fact that a lot of people don’t get this is politically and socially important. It has to do with an intentional forgetting, in bad faith, of unfree social mechanisms and hypocritical power structures, all of which, of course, are not logically necessary but only contingently obligatory, always coincidental, particular historical accidents. The fact that this humans create their society (and not the other way around!) is still not widely recognized, nearly a century after Dynamic Sociology… So Sartre recognizes (most of the time) that he can’t just do an anthropology, or even purely a phenomology of the human condition (though he has a habit of lapsing into this.) Being and Nothing is a phenomenological essay on ontology, which means that it’s about the real-world way our most basic philosophical assumptions play out, it’s Nietzschean–it’s about the way we live our lives and whether we’re doing so authentically. The question, of course, for postmoderns, is why they’re nothing authentic around, and as always, we’re asking it from within the midst of capitalist consumer-reality, which is always deficient and castrated and so on. We’re under siege, we’re thrown into existence without warning or protection, but Sartre’s a Marxist: you’ve got nothing to lose but your chains, and an entire world to win.