Consciousness is capable of grasping abstract, immaterial ideas – for example, the principle of non-contradiction or the concept of universal attraction. Can we deduce from this that it is itself immaterial in nature?

Materialists deny this. Consciousness is not immaterial, they say; it is only ever the material emanation of the material substance of material bodies.

But then how can we explain the fact that ‘material’ entities are capable of conceiving pure abstractions, abstract ‘essences’ that are essentially unconnected with the material world? How could a consciousness that is only ‘material’ link up and interact adequately with the infinity of the various natures that make up the world, with all the beings of unknown essences that surround or subsume it?

What could be the nature of the links between a ‘material’ consciousness and natures, with beings a priori totally unrelated to its own matter?

In particular, how can a material consciousness, confined in a material body, interact effectively with other consciousnesses, confined in other bodies? How can we imagine that it could link up (materially) with beings existing in act, or in potential, throughout the world, and that it could penetrate (materially) their essence?

All these difficult questions were dealt with by Kant in his lively little work, Dreams of a Man Who Sees Spiritsⁱ . In it, he asserts that consciousness (which he calls the ‘soul’) is immaterial, just as what he calls the ‘intelligible world’ (mundus intelligibilis), the world of ideas and thoughts, is immaterial. This ‘intelligible world’ is the proper ‘place’ of the thinking self, because the latter can go there at will, detaching itself from the material, sensible world. Kant also asserts that human consciousness, although immaterial, can be linked to a body, the body of the self, from which it receives material impressions and sensations from the organs of which it is composed. Consciousness therefore participates in two worlds, the material (sensible) world and the immaterial (intelligible) world, – the world of the visible and that of the invisible.

The representation that consciousness has of itself as being a spirit (Geist), when it considers itself in its relations with other consciousnesses, is quite different from the representation it has when it sees itself as being attached to a body. In both cases, it is undoubtedly the same subject who belongs at the same time to the sensible world and to the intelligible world; but it is not the same person, because the representations of the sensible world have nothing in common with the representations of the intelligible world, says Kant. What I think of myself as a living, feeling, carnal being is not on the same level, and has nothing to do with my representation as (pure) consciousness.

Conversely, the representations that I may hold of the intelligible world, however clear and intuitive they may be, are not sufficient to give me a representation of my consciousness as a human being. The representation of oneself as (pure) consciousness can be acquired to a certain extent by reasoning or induction, but it is not naturally an intuitive notion, and it is not obtained through experience.ⁱⁱ

Consciousness does indeed belong to a single subject, who participates in both the « sensible world » and the « intelligible world », but it is also twofold. It is not « the same person » when it represents itself as « pure consciousness » and when it represents itself as « attached to a (human) body ». The fact that it is not « the same » in these two cases implies an inherent, profound duality – it is a dual being.

Here, for the first time, Kant explicitly introduces the expression « duality of the person » (or « duality of the soul in relation to the bodyⁱⁱⁱ « ).

This duality can be inferred from the following observation. Some philosophers believe they can refer to the state of deep sleep when they want to prove the reality of ‘obscure representations’.

We can only observe that they are no longer clearly present in us when we wake up, but not that they were really ‘dark’ when we were asleep. We can only observe that they are no longer clearly present in us when we wake up, but not that they were really ‘obscure’ when we were asleep.

For example, we might well think that they were actually clearer and more extensive than the clearest representations we have in the waking state. This is indeed what we might expect of consciousness when it is perfectly at rest, and separated from the external senses, Kant concludes in a noteⁱⁱⁱ.

Hannah Arendt found this note ‘bizarre’^iv , without further explaining or justifying this trenchant judgement. Perhaps it is indeed ‘bizarre’ to assert that consciousness thinks more clearly and more extensively in deep sleep, and that it is then more ‘active’ than in the waking state? Or does it seem ‘bizarre’ to present consciousness not as ‘one’ but as ‘dual’, this duality implying a contradiction with the unified idea that consciousness might a priori have of its own nature? Consciousness feels the intrinsic unity it possesses as a ‘subject’, and it also feels, as a ‘person’, endowed with a double perspective, one sensible and the other intelligible. It may therefore seem ‘strange’ that the soul should think of itself as both one and two, – ‘one’ (as subject) and ‘two’ (as person).

This intrinsic duality creates a distance between consciousness and itself, an inner gap within itself. It reflects a gap between the ‘waking’ state (where the feeling of duality is revealed) and the ‘deep sleep’ state, where the feeling of duality evaporates, revealing the true nature of consciousness.

To ward off this ‘oddity’, Hannah Arendt proposed an explanation, or rather a paraphrase of Kant’s note: « Kant compares the state of the thinking self to a deep sleep in which the senses are at complete rest. It seems to him that, during sleep, the ideas ‘may have been clearer and more extensive than the clearer ideas of the waking state’, precisely because ‘the sensation of man’s body was not included in it’. And when we wake up, none of these ideas remain.^v

What seems ‘bizarre’ to Hannah Arendt, we then understand, is that after consciousness has been exposed to ‘clear and extensive’ ideas, none of this remains when it wakes up. Awakening erases all traces of the activity of consciousness (or of the ‘soul’) in the deep sleep of the body. Even if there is nothing left, there is at least the memory of an immaterial activity, which, unlike activities in the material world, does not encounter any resistance or inertia. There also remains the obscure memory of what was then clear and intense… There remains the (confused) memory of having experienced a feeling of total freedom of thought, freed from all contingencies. All these memories cannot be forgotten, even if the ideas conceived at the time seem to escape us. It is possible to conjecture that the accumulation of these kinds of memories, these kinds of experiences, will end up reinforcing the idea of the existence of a consciousness that is independent (of the body). By extension, and by analogy, these memories and experiences of deep sleep constitute in themselves an experience of ‘spirituality’, and reinforce the idea of a spirit world, an ‘intelligible’ world, separate from the material world. The consciousness (or spirit) that becomes aware of its power to think ‘clearly’ (during the body’s dark sleep) also begins to think of itself as being able to distance itself from the world around it, and from the matter that constitutes it. But its power to think ‘clearly’ does not allow it to leave this world, nor to transcend it (since waking up always happens – and with it forgetting the ‘clear’ thoughts of deep sleep).

What does this sense of distance from the world bring to consciousness?

Consciousness can see that reality is woven from appearances (and illusions). In spite of the very profusion of these appearances (and illusions), reality paradoxically remains stable, it continues unceasingly, it lasts in any case long enough for us to be led to recognise it not as a total illusion, but as an object, and even the object par excellence, offered to our gaze as conscious subjects.

If we do not feel able to consider reality as an object, we may at least be inclined to consider it as a state, durable, imposing its obviousness, unlike the other world, the ‘intelligible world’, whose very existence is always shrouded in doubt, and improbability (since its kingdom can only be reached in the night of deep sleep).

As subjects, we demand real objects in front of us, not chimeras or conjectures – hence the insignificant advantage given to the sensible world. Phenomenology teaches that the existence of a subject necessarily implies that of an object. The object is what embodies the subject’s intention, will and consciousness. The two are linked. The object (of intention) nourishes consciousness, more than consciousness can nourish itself – the object ultimately constitutes the very subjectivity of the subject, presenting itself to his attention, and even instituting itself as his conscious intention. Without consciousness, there can be neither project nor object. Without an object, there can be no consciousness. Every subject (every consciousness) carries intentions that are fixed on objects; in the same way, the objects (or ‘phenomena’) that appear in the world reveal the existence of subjects endowed with intentionalities, through and for whom the objects take on meaning.

This has a profound and unexpected consequence.

We are subjects, and we ‘appear’, from the very beginning of our lives, in a world of phenomena. Some of these phenomena also happen to be subjects. We then gradually learn to distinguish between phenomena that are merely phenomena (requiring subjects in order to appear), and phenomena that eventually reveal themselves to us as being not just phenomena, of which we would be the spectators, but as other subjects, and even ‘other’ subjects, subjects whose consciousness can be conjectured as ‘any other’. The reality of the world of phenomena is thus linked to the subjectivity of multiple subjects, and innumerable forms of consciousness, which are both phenomena and subjects. The world represents a ‘total phenomenon’, whose very existence requires at least one Subject, or Consciousness, that is not merely a ‘phenomenon’.

In other words, if a thought experiment were to presuppose the absence of any consciousness, the non-existence of any subject, in the original states of the world, would we necessarily have to conclude that the ‘phenomenal’ world did not exist in this time of ‘genesis’? Undoubtedly. The ‘phenomenal’ world would not then exist, insofar as ‘phenomenon,’ since no subject, no consciousness, would be able to observe it.

But another conjecture is still possible. Perhaps, in this time of ‘genesis’, there are subjects (or consciousnesses) that are part of another world, a non-‘phenomenal’ world, a ‘noumenal’ world, the ‘intelligible world’ evoked by Kant?

Since there can be no doubt that the world and reality began to exist long before any human subject appeared, we must conclude that other kinds of consciousness, other kinds of ‘subjects’ already existed then, for whom the world in the state of phenomenon, total and inchoate, constituted an ‘object’ and embodied an ‘intention’. In this case, the world has always been an object of subjectivity, of ‘intentionality’, of ‘desire’, right from its genesis.

It remains to try and imagine for which subjects, for which consciousnesses, the emerging world could then reveal itself as an object and as a phenomenon. We can hypothesise that this primal subjectivity, endowed with an ‘intentionality’, a ‘desire’, pre-existed the appearance of the world of phenomena, in the form of an original power to will, to desire, and to think. Man retains a ‘mysterious’ trace of this ancient, primal power, insofar as he is ‘thought made flesh’. « For the philosopher, speaking from the experience of the thinking self, man is, quite naturally, not only the Word, but thought made flesh; the always mysterious incarnation, never fully elucidated, of the ability to think ».^vi Why is this incarnation ‘mysterious’? Because no one knows where thinking consciousness comes from, and even fewer can guess at the multiplicity of forms it has taken in the universe since the beginning, and may yet take in the future.

Since our only guide in this search is consciousness itself, we must return to it again and again. Every consciousness is unique because it recreates (in its own way) the conditions of the spirit’s original freedom. This freedom was not only that of the first man, but also of all that preceded him, of all that was before him and without him – of all that was non-human.

All consciousness is singular, and the solitary thinker recreates in his own way the absolute solitude of the first Man, the first Thinker. « While a man lets himself go and simply thinks, about anything for that matter, he lives totally in the singular, that is to say in complete solitude, as if the Earth were populated by a Man and not by men ».^vii

Who was the first man, the first thinker to be « alone »? The one the Bible calls Adam? The one the Veda calls Puruṣa? Or some primal, original Spirit, creating in the thinker the living object of his living thought, and thereby creating the conditions for the engendering of a living multitude of other ideas (and other minds)?

We owe it to Parmenides and Plato, thinkers of the first depths, to have celebrated a few primordial spirits, among the most ancient of whom the world has preserved a memory. They admiringly quoted those sages who had lived long before them in ‘the life of intelligence and wisdom’, that life of Noûs and Sophia, which not all men know, but which all may wish to know.

Intelligence and wisdom indeed « live », in the literal sense, for they live by the life of the Spirit. From the beginning, Socrates asserts, the Spirit, the Noûs, has been the « King of heaven and earth »: νοῦς ἐστι βασιλεὺς ἡμῖν οὐρανοῦ τε καὶ γῆς.^viii

In this the Sirach agrees with Socrates, and goes back even further: « Wisdom was created before all things, and the light of understanding from eternity ».^ix

Paradoxically, this very ancient idea, both Greek and Hebrew, now seems to have once again become one of those « secrets still buried in the dark depths ».^x

_______________

iKant. Dreams of a man who sees spirits, – explained by dreams of metaphysics (1766). Translated by J. Tissot. Ed. Ladrange, Paris, 1863

iiIbid. p.27

iiiIn a note appended to Dreams of a man who sees spirits, – explained by dreams of metaphysics.

ivH. Arendt. The life of the mind. Thought. The will. Translated in French by Lucienne Lotringer. PUF, 1981, p.68-69

vIbid.

viIbid. p.72

viiIbid.

viiiPlato, Philebus, 28c

ixSir. 1.4

x « Gods, whose empire is that of souls, silent shadows,

And Chaos, and Phlegethon, silent in the night and the limitless places,

May I have permission to say what I have heard,

May I, with your permission, reveal the secrets

buried in the dark depths of the earth.

Di, quibus imperium est animarum, umbraeque silentes

et Chaos et Phlegethon, loca nocte tacentia late,

Sit mihi fas audita loqui, sit numine vestro,

pandere res alta terra et caligine mersas.

Virgil, Aeneid VI, 264-7