on existentialist consciousness
having noticed that i'm reading a lot of senseless stuff lately, i decided to check out five books from the library on anything that concerns existentialism and i have to admit it's quite a bit of a challenge.
i am currently reading Jean-Paul Sartre's Existentialism and Human Emotions and i find it impossible to keep on going after encountering several instances in the book that defies my comprehension. i'm beginning to think i chose the wrong book for my existentialism crash course. i felt like i'm stuck in a deep rut when i got to the second section of the book, The Desire to be God-that, when i only have thirty more pages to go.
consider it a coincidence but just when i actualized my desire to read Sartre's works (i'm picking up Nausea first thing Tuesday morning), my philosophy of person class decided it high time to start discussions on existentialism. hopefully, we can still manage to squeeze the entire topic into the last three weeks of this school year's last term. it was a good thing i have my readings on the topic with me so i consulted them to help myself out with the book. otherwise, i'd have managed to crack my skull open.
one thing struck me though when i got to the Regions of Being part, particularly the section on Being-for-Itself (pour soi).
To be a conscious being, for Sartre, is to be a being-for-itself, by which he means, a being which is conscious of objects and of itself as conscious of them. Being-for-itself is never pure consciousness; it is always consciousness of an object; it is a mere transparency through which objects are known. Being-for-itself is also always self-conscious, that is, it is always aware of being conscious of the object. But its self-consciousness means nothing more than this-there is no "inner life" of thoughts, beliefs, feelings within consciousness of which it is aware. Consciousness is empty.
if he was trying to say that there exists only two types of consciousness, that is, consciousness of objects and of consciousness of being conscious, what then happens to the consciousness of the I, Descartes' Cogito? is he trying to say that the I does not exist? that the I is categorized under consciousness of objects and is thus, objectified (which shouldn't be the case because existentialism is against objectification of the individual)? or is he merely trying to say that if existence has no rationality, no order, and no laws to give the world structure, then the world falls apart, and that the I shatters along with it?
i am currently reading Jean-Paul Sartre's Existentialism and Human Emotions and i find it impossible to keep on going after encountering several instances in the book that defies my comprehension. i'm beginning to think i chose the wrong book for my existentialism crash course. i felt like i'm stuck in a deep rut when i got to the second section of the book, The Desire to be God-that, when i only have thirty more pages to go.
consider it a coincidence but just when i actualized my desire to read Sartre's works (i'm picking up Nausea first thing Tuesday morning), my philosophy of person class decided it high time to start discussions on existentialism. hopefully, we can still manage to squeeze the entire topic into the last three weeks of this school year's last term. it was a good thing i have my readings on the topic with me so i consulted them to help myself out with the book. otherwise, i'd have managed to crack my skull open.
one thing struck me though when i got to the Regions of Being part, particularly the section on Being-for-Itself (pour soi).
To be a conscious being, for Sartre, is to be a being-for-itself, by which he means, a being which is conscious of objects and of itself as conscious of them. Being-for-itself is never pure consciousness; it is always consciousness of an object; it is a mere transparency through which objects are known. Being-for-itself is also always self-conscious, that is, it is always aware of being conscious of the object. But its self-consciousness means nothing more than this-there is no "inner life" of thoughts, beliefs, feelings within consciousness of which it is aware. Consciousness is empty.
if he was trying to say that there exists only two types of consciousness, that is, consciousness of objects and of consciousness of being conscious, what then happens to the consciousness of the I, Descartes' Cogito? is he trying to say that the I does not exist? that the I is categorized under consciousness of objects and is thus, objectified (which shouldn't be the case because existentialism is against objectification of the individual)? or is he merely trying to say that if existence has no rationality, no order, and no laws to give the world structure, then the world falls apart, and that the I shatters along with it?