Of course it is strange, feeling no desire to write -- but then there are moments when I think I've glimpsed something that I must share. Perhaps I'm wrong about it (surely I am), but that is no reason for cowardice.
Almost four years ago, when I began writing on this webplace, I was reading Kant for my classes and Virginia Woolf for myself. I wrote of those two together then, and I want to return to them again.
Last week in class we were speaking of the notion of synthesis in the Critique of Pure Reason, and relatedly, of the different uses of apperception, consciousness, self-consciousness and others. What is it that Kant is speaking of when he speaks of the I, the I think, the presentation of myself to myself as an appearance and not as a thing in itself? We spoke of the chance that what he meant was something like what contemporary philosophers call indexicality. Could it be that all of those analytic philosophers who thought they had come across something new hadn't in fact? Could it be that Kant was first to realize the something special in our use of the first-personal pronouns, and to accurately describe it? Could he have been first to notice that there was something which could not be analyzed out of the statement 'I think,' and yet imparted no content, no quality, nothing other then the pointing-toward, the ostensiveness?
These are deep tangled issues, they are unclear to me and will remain so, of that I'm sure. But I knew as we were speaking of this, and as I was reading scholars and philosophers writing about Kant, I knew that I had encountered these ideas in other areas. It isn't a question of who came first at all, for there was an explosion of literature that dealt with these exact problems. I remembered Proust and Woolf especially, and the problems I have dealt with in this space -- the problem of feeling as though there a multitude of selves, all anchoring themselves in some shadowy unknown self -- the problem of doubting the return of the self, night after night, sleep after sleep, how is it we find our way back? where does the continuity come from?
I thought of these things, of The Waves and of Marcel, and I wondered what I wanted to say about all of this. And now I think of what Kant says -- how reason hungers to ask these questions, how they are our natural urge, how we will inevitably try and solve them, try and reach past the appearance and to the thing itself -- to the self itself. He condemns philosophy for trying to anchor a metaphysics on such pursuits -- in doing so, reason illicitly lends substance and sense to something which was mere abstract idea. But what if instead we were to use art to explore these problems -- not to solve them, but to understand them. What if we were to try, with Woolf, as she describes in the passage below, to confront our selves, to find the thing itself, the quick of life. And if something incandescent comes of such a project, the better for us, the better for art, the better for the life trying, doing, acting.
Kant says that there are two ways of understanding self-consciousness -- there is the consciousness of oneself as a receptacle for the play of appearances in inner sense -- and then there is the consciousness of oneself as the one who makes, who synthesizes, who combines, who unifies, who acts. He says: "I exist as an intelligence conscious solely of its power of combination."
That is the consciousness of the artist -- the one who experiences the hurt and the suffering, the joy and the love -- the one who receives shocks, who receives blows, who receives impressions -- the one who reacts to those impressions by rearing up, by acting, by putting into words or deeds the experience -- the one who makes order, who imposes order on what comes in, on what is received.
It is fascinating to me to see, as I write this, the great similarities between what Kant says of the possibility of experience, and what some of my favorite artists have said of the process of creating -- I think here of Paul Valery, of Robert Musil, of Proust, of Beckett, and of course of Virginia Woolf. There are many others of course -- but I think now that there is much here, much to be understood.
Almost four years ago, when I began writing on this webplace, I was reading Kant for my classes and Virginia Woolf for myself. I wrote of those two together then, and I want to return to them again.
Last week in class we were speaking of the notion of synthesis in the Critique of Pure Reason, and relatedly, of the different uses of apperception, consciousness, self-consciousness and others. What is it that Kant is speaking of when he speaks of the I, the I think, the presentation of myself to myself as an appearance and not as a thing in itself? We spoke of the chance that what he meant was something like what contemporary philosophers call indexicality. Could it be that all of those analytic philosophers who thought they had come across something new hadn't in fact? Could it be that Kant was first to realize the something special in our use of the first-personal pronouns, and to accurately describe it? Could he have been first to notice that there was something which could not be analyzed out of the statement 'I think,' and yet imparted no content, no quality, nothing other then the pointing-toward, the ostensiveness?
These are deep tangled issues, they are unclear to me and will remain so, of that I'm sure. But I knew as we were speaking of this, and as I was reading scholars and philosophers writing about Kant, I knew that I had encountered these ideas in other areas. It isn't a question of who came first at all, for there was an explosion of literature that dealt with these exact problems. I remembered Proust and Woolf especially, and the problems I have dealt with in this space -- the problem of feeling as though there a multitude of selves, all anchoring themselves in some shadowy unknown self -- the problem of doubting the return of the self, night after night, sleep after sleep, how is it we find our way back? where does the continuity come from?
I thought of these things, of The Waves and of Marcel, and I wondered what I wanted to say about all of this. And now I think of what Kant says -- how reason hungers to ask these questions, how they are our natural urge, how we will inevitably try and solve them, try and reach past the appearance and to the thing itself -- to the self itself. He condemns philosophy for trying to anchor a metaphysics on such pursuits -- in doing so, reason illicitly lends substance and sense to something which was mere abstract idea. But what if instead we were to use art to explore these problems -- not to solve them, but to understand them. What if we were to try, with Woolf, as she describes in the passage below, to confront our selves, to find the thing itself, the quick of life. And if something incandescent comes of such a project, the better for us, the better for art, the better for the life trying, doing, acting.
Kant says that there are two ways of understanding self-consciousness -- there is the consciousness of oneself as a receptacle for the play of appearances in inner sense -- and then there is the consciousness of oneself as the one who makes, who synthesizes, who combines, who unifies, who acts. He says: "I exist as an intelligence conscious solely of its power of combination."
That is the consciousness of the artist -- the one who experiences the hurt and the suffering, the joy and the love -- the one who receives shocks, who receives blows, who receives impressions -- the one who reacts to those impressions by rearing up, by acting, by putting into words or deeds the experience -- the one who makes order, who imposes order on what comes in, on what is received.
It is fascinating to me to see, as I write this, the great similarities between what Kant says of the possibility of experience, and what some of my favorite artists have said of the process of creating -- I think here of Paul Valery, of Robert Musil, of Proust, of Beckett, and of course of Virginia Woolf. There are many others of course -- but I think now that there is much here, much to be understood.
9 comments:
Kant is tricky because deeply confused. And deeply confused because he wants to have his noumenon and eat his appearance, too. Here's how I've thought through Kant, for what it's worth:
1. There's a way the world is.
2. Critters like us with perceptual and cognitive systems perceiving and knowing the world through their perspectives is part of the way the world is.
3. Perception and knowledge is perspectival.
4. What the world might be like (per impossible) from no perspective at all is utterly unknowalbe by definition.
5. That's Kant's noumenon.
6. It's what we can think negatively given our epistemic limits. A simple point really.
Best,
Kevin
Andre Breton suggested that the continuity of the conscious self was a pure illusion (so did Buddha for that matter: ref the five skandhas or strands of identity), and that dreams had or might have as great a continuity if only we could see into the unconscious, subconscious, beyond-conscious or whatever we might choose to term it. His surrealist agenda was an attempt to get beyond the surface continuity to a deeper continuity, to the hidden message, as I've no doubt you are already aware (why do we all want to teach grandma to suck eggs!). I note elsewhere you comment on whether we have got much beyond To The Lighthouse and other attempts at trailing a hand in the deeper flow...I would ask the same of surrealist art (Ernst, Dali, Tanguy - some of whose works make me think of To The Lighthouse...strange beaches, though not St Ives!)...have we got any further? I think not. I think we've regressed.
What a brilliant post, and to have evoked such equally advanced comments. I am bookmarking your site and looking forward to enjoying listening in on many more such compelling discussions. I really appreciate your sensibility. Thank you.
Hi Kevin,
Thanks so much for your thoughtful comment -- I agree with much of what you've outlined -- and that the big problem comes down to the specialness of the human perspective especially given the arguments about cognition and his 'Copernican Revolution.'
I mostly feel glad that I'm not a Kant scholar and can focus on the insights and the originality of his understanding of our cognitive architecture, reason's proper function, and our limitations ... and not worry about all of the problems and inconsistencies in the text!
Also -- thanks for your emails, I'll be responding soon!
Tony,
Thanks for your comment -- one of the most fascinating aspects in the massive Critique of Pure Reason is this notion of self-consciousness -- mostly because it is often very difficult to understand what Kant means by it.
I think there has been much made of this notion historically, and many have gotten a lot more mileage out of it than Kant ever intended, the modernists, surrealists, and myself included. I wonder if Kant would have a new set of Paralogisms for all of the work done to say more about Geist.
Frances, thank you so much!
Wow! I liked your post a lot. Brilliant. I think Machado de Assis, a brazilian writer of 19th century, helps us to think about some of your questions. The "I". For instance, my questions about Machado are: how and why an "I" can have power to legitimate a stupid view of the world and people as it was true etc? How doubts became trues? (Atilio)
Hi,
thanks for the interesting post! (Midnight browsing apparently leads one to interesting sites ...) Some old Kant-related thoughts. A film giving a nice idea about living in Germany, the mentality then, in Kant's time.
Best regards,
T. (now looking what you wrote on Valery, Proust, etc.)
Conc. "two ways of understanding self-consciousness":
A leading neuro-scientist wrote recently about a possible neurological root of a similar double structure: “… another radical theory that Dr. Lynch has proposed, which is the idea that the olfactory cortex formed the template for the evolution of the cortex in mammals and primates. This intriguing theory brings a new perspective to the fact that the olfactory system has unique access to important brain systems including the frontal lobes, the amygdala (which is involve in emotion), and the hippocampus (which is essential to long-term memory).” In other words: So far one thinks: first came the brain structures for dealing with specific senses and only then came the structures in between which fit those sensoric areas together to a whole. Lynch thinks: First came the general structure by way of the olfactory sense and only later other sensoric areas developed and were embedded in the former structure. This would imply that "self" is essentially independent from the number and specifics of the sort of senses one has.
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