Consciousness and Reconquering the Original Unity of Life

What is emphasized in the Climacus-fragment is the negative point of view that a mediation of reality or knowledge is not possible by way of reflection alone because knowledge presupposes a “transition” from language (possibility) to reality which as transition is essentially “doubtful”. Possible conditions of verification, i.e., a theoretical concept of truth, are not discussed. On the other hand, this question of correspondence finds expression in the anthropological concepts of “interest” and “repetition”, which point in the direction of the main philosophical problem in SK, namely the clarification of the conditions of human freedom and personal integrity.

The concept of repetition might be conceived as an effort to make more precise or to determine the structure of the general problem of mediation. Within the scope of predicative consciousness repetition seems to point to – on the assumption that the rather brief exposition of Climacus harbors some philosophical thought – the innate pretension of language to reproduce authentically its objective correlate, “the external”. “The existence of the external I see. Immediately, however, I relate it to something, which also exists, something which is the same, and which will explain as well that the other is the same. Here is reduplication. Here is a question of repetition” (IV B, p.150).

The interesting thing here is not the epistemological point, the traditional problem of adaequatio rei et intellectus, but the way in which the problem is formulated or defined as one of “repetition”. If this category, namely repetition as applied to the problem of knowledge, is interpreted in light of its status and importance within SK’s existential dialectic or theory of selfhood, it appears to express the basic ontological structure of consciousness.

Repetition is the ontological “task” of consciousness.

Consciousness is constituted through a rupture of immediacy. Its telos is, however, not to perpetuate this dualism, that is, consciousness on the stage of pure correlation or res cogitans, but rather to restore the original unity of life as a unity of vital movement and understanding.

This idea of a new or higher form of immediacy is the regulative principle behind SK’s description of the stages of life. And the objective necessity of this standard is pretty evident since it can be derived from the primitive fact of consciousness; man as a conscious being is immediately confronted with the task of repetition.³¹⁵

Thus Judge Vilhelm defines a synthesis of ideal will and factuality, which is “a higher, concentric immediacy”, transcending the natural erotic immediacy of feeling by means of a

“return to the immediate” (3:33f.). This is an immediacy “which contains mediation, that infinity which contains finitude, that eternity which contains temporality” (3:92). C.

Constantius expresses the same anthropological logic by means of the category of repetition,

indicating at the same time its function as a general expression of the settlement with the ontology of speculative idealism insofar as it constitutes an alternative to the categories of

“recollection” and “mediation” (cf. 5:115, 130).

Understanding reality on the basis of the model of recollection is the essence of the Greek-platonic ontology which, to use the words of the fragment of Climacus, maintained that

“existence was a depiction of the idea [...] [that] the visible existence was a repetition” (B 1, p. 150, cf. 6:15). Haufniensis makes the same point: “The eternity of the Greeks lies behind as the past that can only be entered backwards” (6:177). Repetition too, is determined by the past, “for that which is repeated has been” (5:131). This factuality of the past does not, however, pertain to repetition itself, that is, to repetition as perception or understanding.

Repetition does not reproduce a static-eternal sphere of ideas, but conceives ideas as possibilities with a view to the future. “The future is the incognito, in which the eternal, even though this is incommensurable with time, nevertheless preserves its association with time”

(6:177).

An extensive interpretation of this philosophy of time will be presented below. The main point here is to establish the general importance of the category of repetition, the fact that it points to the problem of any holistic understanding. That is why Constantius defines repetition as “the interest of metaphysics” (5.131). Within the scope of existential philosophy, which gives priority to the question of personal freedom, such an holistic understanding is conceived as the individual’s “practical acceptance” of total reality, that is, to the extent that it affects the individual’s life and fate. In other words, the problem of repetition is an expression of the basic logic of consciousness, insofar as consciousness is constituted through both division and unity. The distortion of original unity demands to be healed by a repetition, which reconciles “subject” and “object”, reflection and spontaneity, while preserving reflection in remembrance.

The idea of repetition, in its general or overall form, bears witness to SK’s affinity to idealist ontology. An obvious example of this affinity is Fichte’s structural definition of the moral ego as “an alternating determination of the ego and the non-ego, which because of the unity of the subject must become an alternating determination of the ego through itself”,³¹⁶ or as “the (fundamental instinct) in agreement with the original ego, the ego determined in the mere idea, the genuine ego”.³¹⁷

In view of the fact that repetition attains its ultimate importance within ethical existence, one could say that the definition of predicative synthesis as repetition indicates that this form of consciousness is self-negating, and this specifically with regard to the problem of grasping or integrating the whole of reality. Repetition cannot, on the level of language and theory, solve the task with which it, out of a sort of innate necessity, is confronted. This impotency is, however, not a skepticism on the level of knowledge but rather, an existential incompetence.

Basically, reflective knowledge cannot as such establish an existential position that is congruent with the ontological situation of man. In the Postscript the same point is expressed by the thesis that theoretical knowledge is “approximation”, that is, a position of

“uncertainty” (9:37), due to its dependence on the finite or existing subject. “Every subject is an existing subject, and this should receive an essential expression in all his knowledge, be expressed through the prevention of illusory conclusion in perceptual certainty, in historical knowledge, in illusory results” (9:70).

The self-negating or self-limiting character of predicative consciousness is more explicitly expressed in the drafts of the fragment of Climacus, which claim emphatically, that “doubt is not conquered by the system but by faith” (IV B 13:18). The same point is made in the following aphorism: “I can only leave by freedom what I have entered by freedom” (IV B 13:21). Despite the lack of precision of such expressions, the basic ontological view implied is pretty obvious. Insofar as consciousness is constituted - on the level of possibility - by doubt as practical or volitional, consciousness can only establish perception and an understanding of reality in the form of practice, that is, through the negation of the will of the previous negation of doubt.

As may have been noticed, it seems difficult to draw definite conclusions from the general results of this analysis of consciousness concerning the more definite concept of discursive-predicative certainty other than to affirm the general view that consciousness as such is basically contingent (cf. 9:24) and, on that account, essentially impotent when faced with the problem of mediating reality. It seems, however, that Philosophical Fragments applies this principle to the problem of historical knowledge. This is so insofar as “faith” is defined as the presupposition of knowledge due to the fact, that historical object is constituted through a process of “coming into existence”. Such an object is not accessible either for “immediate perception” or for “knowledge” as deductive reasoning (6:72). This kind of faith is not, however, identical with the one postulated in the fragment of Climacus. The scope of that kind of faith is more general. With regard to historical knowledge, faith appears to be a kind of intuition, “a sense for coming into existence” (6:77), which might be said to originate in the cognitive subject’s awareness of itself as an historical being. The rather obscure definition of this element of knowledge as “faith” is made possible by a restriction of knowledge in the strict sense to the sphere of logical deduction. Consequently, an agreement with the idea of practical consciousness is evident insofar as this idea is constituted by the fact that the logical-linguistic possibilities are a necessary but not a sufficient condition for an understanding of reality. The awareness of the historicity of existence, which Climacus defines as “sense for coming into existence”, has to be established through practical or personal experience of life.

Within the framework of linguistic-reflective consciousness, Constantius gives a description of psychological and epic proportions in his account of his journey to Berlin, in which he gives witness to his inevitably pessimistic-ironic attitude toward life. The result of the experiment is pregnantly expressed in that conviction of resignation, which realizes that one has to “let life unremittingly and treacherously retake everything it has given without providing a repetition” (5:150). The paradoxical definition is well chosen insofar as it draws attention to the fact that consciousness is constituted ontologically through a negation of its

immanent aspiration. “Experience” of reality within the framework of sensuous-linguistic perception is unable to create any unity of existence reconciling the individual with his factual-contingent situation. This is due to the very structure of consciousness as ontologically determined by the infinite multiplicity of its empirical correlates. Consciousness is part of an infinite and negative progress, the constant invasion of new impressions. Thus, even what is objectively the same appears to consciousness as something else. That is what Constantius calls, in the language of poetry, “a repetition of the wrong kind” (5:148). The structure of consciousness presented in the Climacus-fragment is sketched out from an ontological point of view. Climacus discusses the ontological possibilities of reflection and logical analysis. His answer to the question of whether reflection alone can mediate reality also determines the general ontological status of consciousness. In the following discussion I shall go more thoroughly into this problem in order to give, if possible, a more precise meaning to the rather scant and indirect definitions of the fragment. It may then be possible to determine more precisely the essence of SK’s break with the philosophy of identity. It may thereby also be possible to outline the philosophical basis for central concepts of his existential analysis, the first and most important of them being the concept of actuality.

For present purposes we might note that Shmuëli seems to interpret SK’s concept of consciousness in agreement with my own understanding when maintaining that “real and particular existence, or being qua being, can never be attained by reflective consciousness, as

’being’ is always beyond it”.³¹⁸ However, as already mentioned, our agreement must be qualified in a very decisive way insofar as Shmuëli’s thesis, as will be evident from its application within the following interpretation of the doctrine of stages, possesses a degree of generality that, in the last resort distorts the structure of SK’s thought, at least in the way in which it is understood in the present study.

Shmuëli neglects the fact that what may rightly be called a “reflective” form of consciousness is actually conceived as an immature form of consciousness, one whose basic or constitutive law is the abstraction from its own immanent and practical character, that is, from its original relationship to potential ethical existence. Insofar as this possibility of conscious life or understanding is realized, it is not adequate to say that “being is always beyond” or that it is not mediated by “transcendent reality” in the general sense here implied.

This misunderstanding underlies Shmuëli’s description of “the ethical consciousness”.

Consequently, his description is also misleading with regard to the problem of reality and ontology. This form of consciousness is defined by Shmuëli as “negativity”, “a lack that is confirmed by particular phenomenon”,³¹⁹ or as “the awakening of consciousness, which then becomes reflective”.³²⁰ It appears like a kind of perpetuum mobile in analogy to “aesthetic”

fluctuation. However, SK’s main point is that ethical existence relates itself integratively to factuality (reality), and when this existential unity is dissolved it is because the problem of existential unification appears in a new form, namely as the problem of guilt.

2. The Ontological Status of Consciousness

SK’s general ontological view with regard to consciousness in SK is that consciousness is finite or factual. It exists as a logical-universal entity within a particular phenomenon, the human individual. Its relationship to empirical multiplicity is at the same time necessary and contingent. This essential limitation is what basically constitutes consciousness as practical, that is, as conditioned by a non-transcend-able act of volition. Consciousness rests on its own grounds and presupposes itself when it relates to the reality from which it has been divorced by that process which negates the status of the individual as part of the natural process.

Is it this basic point of view or way of thinking which underlies the rather summary and therefore apparently unfounded criticism of the concept of the universal or pure consciousness (cf. for instance 6:168, 224, 232). What here is alluded to is the idealistic proposal that consciousness and actuality are identical due to their mutual participation in the absolute. SK’s rejection of the idea of pure consciousness does not imply, however, that he rejects the basic idea of transcendental philosophy, namely, that universal possibilities structure concrete or individual reality. For SK this is also the general logic of the dialectic of existence. A more precise description of the crucial difference between the concept of consciousness in SK’s existential thinking and that of the philosophy of identity is attainable only through a clarification of the status of the categories, that is, in what sense categories constitute or structure reality. Exhaustive elaborations on this matter are not found in SK, only in the form of epigrams.