Consciousness And Self-Identity

Abstract

From a phenomenological perspective, one has to be able to offer a description of the pre-reflective, primal internal state, i.e., to set it in a discourse as a theme of inquiry through the reflective gesture of the method. Here emerges what Gallagher and Zahavi properly call the “gain” and the “loss” of the phenomenological method, which, as reflective, “does not merely copy or repeat the original experience; rather, it transforms it.” Entrance into the methodological reflection marks the passage from the self-consciousness (pre/non-reflective self-awareness) to the proper consciousness (reflective awareness) and puts in play the egological-subjective feature of the inner life. The coming out of the Ego becomes a help to the description (I as I can now not only feel but also know, i.e., consciously recognize my self-consciousness experiences as mine), while at the same time it provides an additional complication of the question: Is there no Ego in the pre-reflective sphere? Who then feels selfconsciousness as her own? The question of the reference of the reflecting act to its pre-reflective root is of basic importance from a phenomenological standpoint, because it deals not only with the essence of the method, but also with the status of Ego as performer of such a method. If one identifies the egological level only with the reflective one, it becomes hard to affirm that the pre-reflective sphere is self-aware: how is it possible to talk about a self, which in turn is not an I? But on the other hand, if one attributes the egological trait both to the reflective and to the pre-reflective consciousness grade, it is possible to question not only the legitimacy, but also the necessity of something like the phenomenological method: why should I carry on a reflection on myself, if I am self-aware already as prereflecting? To exit from this antinomy, one has to come back to the fundamental distinction Gallagher and Zahavi make between feeling and knowing, where only the latter is linked to the authentically egological level of self-awareness (the one of the method), while the former describes the immediate experience of self: “When I am aware of a current pain, perception, or thought, the experience in question is given immediately, non-inferentially, and non-criterially as mine”; it means that “I am usually able to respond immediately, i.e., without inference or observation, if somebody asks me what I have been doing, or thinking, or seeing, or feeling immediately prior to the question.” The central mark of pre-reflective selfawareness is thus its present occurring, which involves simultaneity of experiencing (perceiving, being in pain, thinking) and being aware of it. If I cannot doubt a self as mine when I am currently experiencing something I am living now, because I feel prior to knowing that I am experiencing, what happens to past experiences? If to the question “are you in pain?” i.e., “are you as your-self in pain?” I am able to answer immediately “Yes I am—as my-self,” since I am simultaneously feeling in pain, can I show the same confidence to the question, “Are you—as yourself—the one who was in pain?” In this case I am not feeling in pain, but I should remember having been in pain, and so I should know that I as myself am the same one who was before in pain and remembers it now, and that the pain was and is always mine. From where does this knowledge derive? What is its legitimacy, considering that it lacks the grounding trait of immediacy? This question is linked to the former one about time, which has elapsed between the experienced pain and the remembered one, and so such a question must find a solution related to its temporal mark. Edmund Husserl dealt with a similar issue in his Time-Lectures regarding what he calls the “most important matters of phenomenology,” which he treats in §39 of the text, where he works out the fundamental notion of the double intentionality of retention and the connected