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====== Edith Stein (2000:II § 1) – consciência e senciência ======

//Data: 2024-03-04 13:31//

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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.

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Up until now, we were speaking about feelings of living and states of living. Closely examined, the two expressions don’t signify the same thing. A conscious being’s states of living are wont to assert themselves in the manner peculiar to consciousness. Such a consciousness of life’s status, its being experienced, is a feeling of living. But it’s also possible that living states emerge without manifesting themselves in feelings of life. A weariness can be present (perhaps betray itself to others through my exterior) without my knowing anything about it myself.((Stein is contrasting a physical condition or state, Zustand, with the feeling or sentient registration of that state. The two don’t always coincide.)) In a state of excitement or during intense activity to which I’m completely given over, consciousness of how I’m doing might not even occur to me. Not until a state of total exhaustion sets in with the termination of tension, and I’m now fully aware of it, do I notice as I’m bringing the state to givenness for myself ((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.)) that it already existed before now and that every exertion has been disproportionately costly for me.

Of course, such a status, which isn’t felt and doesn’t “come to consciousness,” no longer ought to be deemed a status of consciousness, an experience. This status is something transcendent over against experience that manifests itself in experience.((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.)) And even if this status comes to consciousness in a feeling of life, nevertheless this becoming conscious is not to be confused with the experiencing of an immanent content or with the consciousness of that experiencing that indwells it as a constitutive moment. When I feel invigorated, I’m not deceiving myself about the content of this feeling – which I designate precisely as vigor – nor does my consciousness of this experiencing deceive me. Without any doubt, I’m feeling because I’m conscious of it for myself. And I’m feeling invigorated and nothing else, because I’m having precisely this feeling. But it’s entirely possible that I feel myself invigorated when the state of vigor isn’t really present; the future can correct me about this.

Determinations of a reality, its statuses and properties, manifest themselves as immanent contents in the life feelings – just as in the extra-egoic data. The color of a thing manifests itself in color sensations as its momentary optical status, and in turn such statuses manifest the enduring optical property. In the same way, a momentary determination of my ego – its life-status – manifests itself in the life feeling, and in turn such determinations manifest an enduring real property: lifepower.((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.)) Of course, the ego that is in possession of this real property shouldn’t be confused with the pure ego originally experienced as point of radiation of pure experiences.((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.)) The ego is grasped only as a bearer of its properties, as a transcendent reality that comes to givenness by manifestation in immanent data but never becomes immanent itself. We shall designate this real ego, its properties and statuses, as the sentient.((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.”)) We now see that consciousness and sentience are distinguished from one another in their basic essences: consciousness as realm of “conscious” pure experiencing, and sentience as a sector of transcendent reality manifesting itself in experiences and experiential contents. We must refrain here from defining this reality over against realities existing physically and perhaps otherwise. Transcendent reality comes into consideration for us at this point only insofar as our investigation of causality is concerned, and accordingly, insofar as we’re compelled to continue our investigation upon this new ground. What appears to us now as the properly generative occurrence is no longer the life feelings, but rather the modes of lifepower manifesting themselves in the life feelings. The changing conditionalities of life signify an increase or decrease of lifepower, and different life feelings correspond to that as “manifestations.” Deceptions are possible here, just as they are with every transcendent apprehension, every encounter through manifestation. Life feelings, which don’t carry any “objective significance,” can deceive me about the true state of my lifepower, in the same way that – perhaps in a case of hallucination – “purely subjective” data let a thing appear that doesn’t exist at all in reality. To make the possibility of such deceptions and their termination intelligible is the task of a critical epistemology of inner perception, and it should not concern us any further here.((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).]))

We have to investigate whether there aren’t also true effects – that is, sensate-real effects – corresponding to the “true” causes that we would discover behind the life feelings as their appearances, so that what we were regarding until now as effect has to be considered their appearance. The experiencing would appear as the point where causality kicks in, according to our analysis of experience.((Admittedly, we’ll see that there is also a primary involvement of experiential contents. See pp. 72-73.)) That was operative as long as “causality” was for us the determinately conditioned phenomenal relation of dependence of life feelings and other experiences. Now, where we have found a real substrate of effecting, naturally it can’t include any pure experience or, accordingly, any moment of experience as a segment in the causal occurring. Reality exercises no effects upon pure experiencing. However, the experiences themselves as well as their contents, to some extent, are manifestations of real conditionalities and properties such as the life feelings. The receptivity of the subject manifests itself in sensations – or more precisely, in the having of sensations – and, to be sure, first of all as a momentary status. Yet, in the fact that a different receptivity comes to givenness according to the peculiarity of the contents and their experiencing, the different conditionalities appear as modes and simultaneously as manifestations of an enduring property that likewise is designated as receptivity in the customary way of speaking: the enduring property within shifting conditionalities. And it’s this enduring property whose shifting modes depend on the shifting states of life or are brought about by them.

The real causality of the sensate manifests itself in the phenomenal causality of the experiential sphere. The enduring properties of the real ego, or sentient individual, appear as a substrate of the sensate causal occurrences which persists in a regulated changing of modes of those properties; so that a determinate property – lifepower – is singled out as both setting the mode of the others by its own momentary modes, and set in its own states by them in turn. The fact that powers are supplied to or withdrawn from lifepower is a “cause” of the sensate occurrence. The “effect” consists in the alteration of other sensate properties. There isn’t any direct causal dependence of other properties on one another without the mediation of lifepower. For example, receptivity for colors can be neither enhanced nor diminished by receptivity for sounds. Yet the two can be enhanced together by an increase of lifepower that’s independent of both of them. Or, lifepower can be diminished by the activity of one, and in that way the other is diminished in turn.

Apparently, sensate causality differs from physical causality in the following way. With the latter, the unity of the causal occurring permeates the entire network of material nature, and single things emerge from that network as centers of occurrence. With the former, we’re confined to the sensate states of an individual, who as substrate of the casual occurring corresponds to the totality of the matter, while his or her properties emerge as single centers analogous to things.((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.)) Whether that individual is included in the network of material nature, so that the sensate causal event fits in with the physical; and whether, moreover, the sensate causal network overlaps to other individuals and encompasses the totality of all sensate occurrence, and in what manner: we can hardly say anything about all that, of course, before closer investigation, and for the time being it lies outside the circle of our considerations.((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).)) Until now we were taking the psyche of an individual to be a world unto itself, like material nature; we were able to consider it without making reference to its possible relations to other worlds, and we have not yet by any means exhausted what such an isolating investigation can teach us.

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//PS: STEIN, Edith. Philosophy of psychology and the humanities. Tr. Mary Catharine Baseheart and Marianne Sawicki. Washington, D.C: ICS Publications, Institute of Carmelite Studies, 2000//