The Genesis of Consciousness in the Difference between Subject and Object

“Immediacy” is the category of any reality, which is outside the actual horizon of any consciousness, and this insofar as consciousness always “mediates” reality. This term is used therefore as a general definition of that stage at which the competence of mediation itself is in the process of being established, and where the extension of immediate or unconscious reality is the greatest possible. This is what Climacus defines as the level of consciousness of the child. “How then is the child’s consciousness determined? It is actually not at all determined;

this could also be expressed by saying: it is immediate. Immediacy is exactly the

undetermined” (IV B 1, p. 145, cf. IV B 14:13). The idea of “immediate consciousness” is, strictly speaking, a contradiction in adjecto, insofar as consciousness as such implies mediation. This contradiction, however, expresses the basic truth that consciousness is not a simple fact but an historical process, that is, a successive reduction of the field of immediacy.

That implies, expressed in the categories of personalistic philosophy, a movement from the

“merely psychically qualified [...] something within the dimensions of temporality and secularity, in immediate connection with ‘the other’ ”, towards an “infinite consciousness of the self” (15:106). The extreme form of this external-quantitative consciousness is that primary symbiosis or harmonious interaction of corporeal and psychic factors which the Page personified in A’s treatise on the stages of sensuality. As has been pointed out, we were here shown some structural features of the emerging subjectivity within pre-reflective life. In this presentation the decisive cooperation of consciousness was set aside by way of experiment.

Climacus now clarifies, one could say, what constitutes consciousness as the pole of determination, that is, as a negation of the “undetermined”.

The determination of immediacy makes the subject-object relationship emerge in what is a mutual determination, namely, that the subject determines the object and the object determines the subject. This process is, we must now remember, an asymmetric constellation insofar as it is also a receptive and objective relationship founded in the subject’s act of identification and validity. The medium of this act of identification is language or “the ideal”.

“Immediacy is actuality, language is the ideal, [while] consciousness is the contradiction [between them]. In the moment I express actuality contradiction appears, because what I express is the ideal” (IV B 1, p. 146).

What Climacus emphasizes is the negative aspect of predicative consciousness. The immediate unity of life, that is, the awareness of reality through emotional mediation, is dissolved and replaced by the dualism of the subject-object relationship. This duality is both the presupposition of the act of identification and decisively established by the very same act.

This is the basic meaning of the assertion that “consciousness is the contradiction”. This

“contradiction” is a general structure of consciousness, regardless of the level of consciousness in question. Accordingly, “actuality” should not be identified with “the world which exists prior to us and surrounds us”, as claimed by Blass.³⁰⁸ We should, however, conceive this identification of “actuality” with the sensual world as characteristic of primitive consciousness or that stage of existence on which the individual’s position is basically receptive and determined outwardly by sensual multiplicity. That is the form of consciousness or existence of Papageno.

Insofar as the differentiation of existence through the subject-object relationship is mediated by language, the “coming into existence” (IV B 14:9) of consciousness is basically dependent on the child’s integration into the community of language. Linguistic competence constitutes emancipation from the confinement created by the existence of need. Language means the introduction of freedom or possibility through factuality insofar as language is

“partly an original given and partly something freely developing” (III A 11, cf III A 37, 2:65,

68). Thus that “transition” from actuality to possibility, which is so essential to SK’s discussion of the problem of freedom is inextricably bound up with the concept of linguistic competence (cf. 6:138).

Language or the ideal is both the foundation of subjectivity, possibility and freedom and, at the same time, a factor within immediacy or the factual situation. This means that the negation of immediacy is an immanent process, that is, a realization of immediately given possibility both within the psychic structure and the cultural context.

Within the naive and receptive consciousness of the child this relation between the ideal and actuality is basically “factual”, it is an almost symmetrical relation that does not realize the potential of consciousness as an act of self-grounding. “As long as exchange occurs without mutual contact, consciousness only exists by its possibility” (IV B 1, p. 147).

According to Climacus, on this level no real “collision” between the two poles takes place in that naive consciousness at once believes that the linguistic term corresponds to the object. “It believes that it expresses actuality” (IV B 14:7). In this sense consciousness is immediate and hence not really conscious of anything, for “immediately everything is true [...] immediately everything is real” (IV B 1, p. 147). The correspondence between language and actuality, which is the ultimate aim of predicative consciousness, exists, however, in a form that contradicts its own essence. The correspondence is not established by consciousness in virtue of its own authority with regard to validity or truth, but is a pure fact, the result of cultural internalization. To ask whether such a form of consciousness is conceivable from a psychological point of view is irrelevant as the approach is not one of a “developmental psychology”, that is, it is not an empirical description of the content of consciousness.

Climacus focuses on the a priori logical structure or what Kant defines as the conditions rendering “experience” possible.

Climacus’ reflections are similar to Hegel’s famous analysis of “sensual certainty": “They mean this piece of paper on which I am writing this, or rather have written it; but they do not say what they mean. If they really wanted to speak about this piece of paper, which they mean, and that they wanted to say, it is impossible because this sensuous thing which they mean is inaccessible to the consciousness, which per se belongs to the universal dimension”.³⁰⁹ In both cases the point is that mediation through language is hidden from the subject.

According to Climacus the dissolution of the immediate awareness of identity is introduced by the interruption of “reflection”. Reflection is defined as “the possibility of the relation” (IV B 1, p. 147) that is consciousness’ awareness of the contradiction between language and object. Reflection in this context means a structure within primitive or naive consciousness and not that kind of reflective attitude or self-reflection to which SK attaches such importance with regard to man’s possibility of transcending the level of personal and cultural immediacy (cf. 1.228, 2:157, 285, 3:88, 5:163, 7:34, 109, 136, 141, 8:26, 170). On the other hand, this structural reflection or self-reference constitutes the general possibility of explicit or mature self-reflection. As both a negative-destructive and a positive-constructive

factor, reflection rests transcendentally on the general competence of language as conditioned by psychic structure and cultural traditions and conventions. A kind of formula for expressing this relationship is found in Anti-Climacus: “The self is reflection, and the imagination is reflection, [it] is the rendition of the self as the self’s possibility” (15:89). The fact that reflection is rooted in immediate or pre-reflective life indicates in general the connection between genesis and self-determination.

The primary function of reflection is to relate the immanent ideal, that is, internalized language, to the immediate “experience”, a sensually mediated material or “actuality”.

“Within reflection they get in touch with each other in such a way that a relationship becomes possible” (Pap. IV B 1, p. 147). Climacus here obviously takes a further step in identifying a state that modifies the original state of identity, namely, that “exchange” which is said to occur “without mutual contact”. The development has, however, not reached the point where the relationship reveals a definiteness that will establish a “mutual friction” (IV B 14:7) with this latter seen as the peculiarity of consciousness proper. Reflection alone only establishes the relationship between language and object as possibility; “the moment the ideal is related to actuality the possibility appears” (IV B 1, p. 147).

If one would attempt to formulate these considerations within the scope of psychological realism, one could say that the terminus of harmonious “exchange” which reflection brings forward is a kind of neutral or preliminary search for a linguistic means to express sensual impression, thus preparing the act of identification of consciousness. Reflection on this level is a horizontal movement across the multiplicity of internalized language to find an adequate term of denotation. This corresponds to the fact that reflection in general, regardless of the level of consciousness, is the medium of possibility. It “discovers” possibility without

“realizing” it.

The introduction of language constitutes a schism between language and object. Language attains a status of priority, which temporarily displaces the object. Implicitly it is no longer true “that immediately everything is true”, and this insofar as the linguistic expression is not available immediately but has to be “discovered”. An element of activity has been introduced which was not present at the level of pure or symbiotic immediacy. This primitive activity is the first stage within a process aiming at constituting “what is said” as “something, which is created by me” (IV B 1, p. 146); in other words, its climax is predication as an autonomous act of consciousness.

The meaning of this definition is certainly not what Blass has the misfortune to maintain, namely, the postulating of an ontic spontaneity, “the understanding of the idea as a spontaneous achievement of reflection”.³¹⁰ An element of truth in this interpretation is that it emphasizes the fact that the medium of predication, the word, is “discovered” by the subject.

This interpretation is, however, misleading to the extent that it overlooks the fact that the activity is relative to a factual-linguistic arsenal. The freedom that one finds within the activity of denotation is necessarily dependent on existing linguistic possibilities, and this is

especially the case on the level at which the constitution of consciousness or linguistic competence as such takes place.

“Critical” activity within the sphere of linguistic multiplicity means that the act-character, which is essential to consciousness becomes effective to a certain extent. Yet, according to Climacus, critical activity or reflection in this primitive form is not identical with consciousness, as its focus on linguistic possibility remains purely an “analytical” activity, a.k.a. a semantic analysis. The semantic element is not related explicitly to the object. This relationship, this bridging of the gap between meaning and sensuality, is the birth of consciousness. “Reflection is the possibility of the relationship, consciousness is the relationship, whose first form is the contradiction” (IV B 1, p. 147).

When Nordentoft speaks generally of reflection as a “registration of contradiction” he chooses to overlook what seems to be a trivial fact, namely, that Climacus uses the term

“reflection” in a “technical” sense. The distinction between reflection and consciousness is thus blurred. It is misleading to define consciousness as “mere registration” since consciousness first of all lets contradiction emerge and may thus be defined as “subjectively engaged”, in a transcendental-logical sense. On account of his psychological-empirical approach Nordentoft fails to acknowledge this.³¹¹ The same criticism could be leveled against Malantschuk’s interpretation: “Only by language or rather by reflection is immediacy divided into two opposite components: actuality and ideality”.³¹² Language, which is the broader concept, is the general basis of the division while reflection is a function of language. As reflection on factual linguistic possibilities reflection is the presupposition of consciousness’

division of immediacy into language and its object. Thus language in the full sense as denotation presupposes reflection. On the other hand, insofar as language is both the presupposition of reflection, being that system of denotation on which reflection reflects, and the actual denotation, which is made possible by the preliminary work of reflection, it would be correct with Malantschuk to say that language and reflection are identical. However, the

“technical” meaning of reflection is then lost, and so is thereby also the crucial distinction between language as conventional system and language as act of identification, all of which is implied in Climacus’ argument.

The application of the linguistic term, found by reflection, to the object constitutes consciousness on its primitive or negative level, that is, as a “question” about the agreement between predicate and object. In this way Climacus has discovered the answer to his initial question, “to find the ideal possibility of doubt within consciousness”, insofar as “the possibility of doubt lies with the third which establishes a relation between the two” (IV B 1, p. 148). By this transition from “analysis” to “synthesis” the bounds of immediate consciousness are broken through. Immediacy cannot contain doubt, because this doubt is doubt as to the meaning of immediacy.

This constitution of general or cognitive consciousness through the division of language and reality is reflected in the logical principle of identity and contradiction. In denotation identity is presupposed and expressed that “what is uttered is supposed to express actuality”

(IV B 1, p. 146). With that there is also established negation, non-identity. Any predication means that a phenomenon is placed in a position of contrast or contradiction within the totality of reality. This contradiction is not identical with the contradiction Climacus defines as the first form of consciousness. It is, however, fair to say that the first contradiction is based on the latter insofar as the predication and its implied contradiction is made possible by the “openness” of consciousness, that is, by the general dualism between language and reality. The space thus created makes predicative limitation possible.

This understanding of predication and identity is the basis for experiencing reality as determined by contradictions as is expressed with simple clarity in a note from 1844: “It is not difficult to comprehend that in a certain sense the principle of identity is higher than the principle of contradiction and is the basis for it. But the principle of identity is only the limit for human thought; it is like blue mountains, like the line sketchers call the base — the drawing is the main concern. As long as I live in time, the principle of identity is only an abstraction [...] As long as I live, I live in contradiction, for life itself is contradiction” (V A 68. Cf. IV A 4, 57, 192 and 10:111).

The main point within SK’s anthropological perspective is the fact that “doubt” and

“negation” are essential constituents of consciousness when consciousness is analyzed from the point of view of ontology. With this definition a basic premise of SK’s criticism of idealism also appears. What is criticized is not the idea of the constitution of reality by consciousness as such, but rather a version of this general idealist idea conceiving constitution as an encompassing relation of identity. Criticism here is thus combined with what appears to be a methodological affinity to Hegel’s “dialectic of negation”. The crucial difference becomes visible through a closer definition or determining of the essence of doubt.

According to SK or Climacus, doubt as a structure of consciousness reflects the ontological truth that consciousness is an “insurmountable” condition, which means that a “regression”

to the absolute as the identity of subject and object, by way of self-reflection, is impossible.

Climacus expresses this point of view rather briefly when he claim that “doubt presupposes reflection”. The relevance of this view for the criticism of the speculative synthesis is indicated by the identification of reflection with “knowledge” and “objective thought” (IV B 1, p.148). From this one should not, however, on the one hand draw the rather absurd conclusion that Hegel’s position does not transcend the level of naive consciousness.

On the other hand, it could be said that Hegel seems to be a victim of the illusion created when the structural or anthropological basis of reflection is overlooked, namely, the fact that

“reflection produces doubt” (IV B 1, p. 148).

This same basic thought is developed, with a clearer address, in the Postscript, in which Climacus maintains that the deduction of the categories or the reflection on the logical conditions of language cannot be developed deductively into a system of reality. “The infinite preponderance which the logical as the objective has over all thinking is again limited by the fact that, seen subjectively, it is an hypothesis precisely because it is indifferent to existence in the sense of actuality” (9:94).

The essential motive in SK’s treatment of “the dialectic of beginning” is to argue that logical categories are only presuppositions of consciousness’ mediation of reality. Therefore movement in logic is out of the question insofar as it presupposes an original identity of concept and existence. This basic view is only indirectly expressed by the formulation in Climacus which is usually cited or quoted as the classic objection to Hegel³¹³: “That beginning of the System which begins with the immediate is thus itself reached by means of reflection” (9:95). This thesis is a negative expression of the fact that the immediate is the presupposition of the use of logical categories or language. As presupposition it cannot itself be part of the logical system, except as a reflection upon its very presuppositions.

Climacus’ main argument is this: To develop reflection or language’s possibilities of predication into knowledge of reality, the level of reflection itself has to be transcended. An ontological novelty has to be postulated, and this is exactly doubt. The basic question of Climacus’ investigation has been this: “The act of doubt, what it is, a determination of the will or a necessity of knowledge” (IV B 5:6). And the result of Climacus’ considerations is the realization that “in doubt there has to be an act of the will, or else to doubt would be identical with being uncertain” (B 5:8, cf. 5:13 and 13:21). This defines more precisely the general logic of consciousness, which is that consciousness presupposes itself or is self-grounding: The act of self-grounding is an act of the will, and consciousness is thus defined as practical in the strict sense found in transcendental philosophy. In this perspective logical necessity, that is, the medium of reflectivity, is, in contrast to what is the case within speculative idealism, reduced to a discrete factor within an encompassing freedom.

When Climacus rather generally maintains that “consciousness is spirit” (IV B 1, p. 148), the meaning of this widespread definition is primarily this interdependence of cognitive and practical consciousness. The primacy of the latter is a general notion underlying SK’s engagement with ethical individuality, with this last as the sublime form of manifestation of this structurally embedded imperative of self-determination. This means that every form of human existence is a kind of self-determination independent of the individual’s awareness of it as task. Volitional self-determination is the basic ontological situation of man, a task from which no exemption is granted insofar as even the attempt of abstracting from reality, as affording a ground for this kind of determination, is an expression of this self-activity.

This means further that every form of human existence is a kind of self-determination,

This means further that every form of human existence is a kind of self-determination,