- destaque
- Baseheart & Sawicki
destaque
As determinações de uma realidade, os seus estados e propriedades, manifestam-se como conteúdos imanentes nos sentimentos de vida — tal como nos dados extra-egóicos. A cor de uma coisa manifesta-se nas sensações de cor como o seu estado ótico momentâneo e, por sua vez, esses estados manifestam a propriedade ótica duradoura. Da mesma forma, uma determinação momentânea do meu ego — o seu estatuto de vida — manifesta-se no sentimento de vida e, por sua vez, tais determinações manifestam uma propriedade real duradoura: a potência vital. É claro que o ego que está na posse desta propriedade real não deve ser confundido com o ego puro originalmente experimentado como ponto de radiação de experiências puras. O ego é apreendido apenas como portador das suas propriedades, como uma realidade transcendente que chega à existência através da manifestação em dados imanentes, mas que nunca se torna imanente. Designaremos este ego real, as suas propriedades e estatutos, como o senciente. Vemos agora que a consciência e a senciência se distinguem uma da outra nas suas essências básicas: a consciência como domínio da experiência pura “consciente”, e a senciência como um setor da realidade transcendente que se manifesta em experiências e conteúdos experienciais. Devemos abster-nos de definir esta realidade em relação a realidades existentes fisicamente e talvez de outra forma. A realidade transcendente só entra em consideração para nós neste momento na medida em que a nossa investigação da causalidade está em causa e, consequentemente, na medida em que somos obrigados a continuar a nossa investigação sobre este novo terreno. O que nos aparece agora como o acontecimento propriamente gerador já não são os sentimentos de vida, mas sim os modos de poder de vida que se manifestam nos sentimentos de vida. As condicionalidades mutáveis da vida significam um aumento ou diminuição da potência vital, e os diferentes sentimentos de vida correspondem a isso como “manifestações”. Aqui é possível enganarmo-nos, tal como acontece com qualquer apreensão transcendente, qualquer encontro através da manifestação. Os sentimentos de vida, que não têm qualquer “significado objetivo”, podem enganar-me sobre o verdadeiro estado da minha potência vital, da mesma forma que — talvez num caso de alucinação — dados “puramente subjectivos” deixam aparecer uma coisa que não existe de todo na realidade. Tornar inteligível a possibilidade de tais enganos e o seu fim é a tarefa de uma epistemologia crítica da percepção interior, e não nos deve preocupar mais aqui.
Baseheart & Sawicki
- Stein is contrasting a physical condition or state, Zustand, with the feeling or sentient registration of that state. The two don’t always coincide.[
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- The odd expression “bring to givenness for myself’ means that I advert to the presence of something and allow it to appear to me as just what it is. I allow it to “give itself’ to my consciousness. This expression developed from the German idiom es gibt (literally, “it gives”), which is used in situations where we would say “there is.” Phenomenology examines the various modalities in which objects “give themselves to consciousness,” that is, the various ways in which objects “are there.” In the example under discussion, my fatigue “is there” in my consciousness precisely as something already operative at the point when I became aware of it.[
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- In the phenomenological terminology used by Stein, “transcendent” refers to objects that are independent of the consciousness in which they arise. “Transcendental” refers to consciousness that allows objects to arise within it. The effect that fatigue exerts over conscious life is a factor registering within in consciousness as stemming from beyond consciousness.[
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- What Theodor Lipps works out concerning “sensate power” in his Leitfaden der Psychologie, 3d ed., rev. (Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann, 1909) pp. 80 ff. and 124 ff. coincides with our analysis of lifepower to a certain extent, just as the conception of psychology represented there generally stands quite near to ours. Unfortunately, a comparison that could ascertain exactly the points of agreement and disagreement is not possible within the framework of this work. In order to set forth the agreement, I will merely quote a characteristic place out of a treatise that approximates Lipps’s position. [Stein quotes Das Gedächtnis by Max Offner. In the following quotation, she adds a phrase, deletes a phrase, and miscopies words in several places – not an unusual occurrence in scholarly work before the advent of photocopying. Offner’s own terms, and Stein’s addition and deletion, are indicated below within brackets.] “(W)e are capable of apprehending quite clearly contents of sensations that are themselves faint, as long as we are refreshed and no stronger or even equally strong contents simultaneously occupy the consciousness. And we are able to be imprinted more strongly (sharply) and firmly by faint sensations than by considerably stronger impressions (contents) received when we are fatigued or when even stronger contents draw our attention to themselves. . . Furthermore, if we remember that stimuli which according to quality and quantity are objectively completely similar [Stein adds parenthetically: of course for us, the objective consideration plays no role] still affect us differently at different times, hardly bothering (touching) us in one instance but completely claiming us in another, then through that we also see ourselves urged toward an assumption: something else has to combine with the psychophysical process called forth by the stimulus. The total psyche has to accommodate that process, has to contribute something as well, has to give it the possibility of being brought to bear. It’s as though the process were tapping into a supply that is used up in the period of the engagement, a supply that is low and quickly exhausted under states of bodily fatigue and illness, and that replenishes itself again through rest and nourishment. We wish to call this supply sensate power, in concert with Lipps. Sensate power is something [Stein deleted: in or at the soul] that, though quantitatively limited, can’t be more closely described. It has to accommodate the arousal induced by a stimulus. To apply (use) a commercial expression, it has to provide the liquid assets before any sensate process, especially a conscious process, can get going.” See Max Offner, Das Gedächtnis: Die Ergebnisse der experimentellen Psychologie und ihre Anwendung in Unterricht und Erziehung (Berlin: Reuther&Reichard, 1909), p. 44.[
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- This remark is addressed to readers familiar with Husserl, and it discreetly informs them that Stein means to depart from his account of an impersonal pure transcendental ego. See §57 of Husserl’s Ideas, Book One, pp. 132-133.[
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- Das Psychische, “that which is sentient.” The noun psyche in classical Greek denotes the principle of life in animals and humans. The phenomenologists used the noun Psyche and the adjective psychisch in precisely that sense. Unfortunately, in English “psychic” has another meaning that is inappropriate here; “sensate” and “sentient” are closer to Stein’s meaning. The English noun “psyche” retains a meaning close to the Greek and German. Here, Stein insists upon a key distinction between “consciousness” and “psyche.”[
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- Max Scheler deals with this theme in “Die Idole der Selbsterkenntnis,” Abhandlungen und Aufsätze 2:5-168 (Leipzig: Weissen Bücher, 1915). [“The Idols of Self-Knowledge,” Selected Philosophical Essays, 3-97, trans. David R. Lachterman (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973).] [
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- Admittedly, we’ll see that there is also a primary involvement of experiential contents. See pp. 72-73.[
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- Of course, the analogy is not to be pushed to the extreme. It cannot be carried through in another direction. If we consider the sentient individual as “bearer” of its properties, then clearly it finds its analog in the single thing.[
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- The contagion of feelings throughout a social mass of individuals was an issue much discussed by phenomenologists at the time Stein published this work, in 1922. Compare, for example, Max Scheler, Zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Sympathiegefühle und von Liebe und Hass (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1913); and the expanded edition: Wesen und Formen der Sympathie (Bonn: Friedrich Cohen, 1923). The latter was translated by Peter Heath as The Nature of Sympathy (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1954).[
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