The Solution to the Hidden Mystery of Self-Consciousness

Abstract

Self-consciousness has been held to be the least problematic of topics. Yet its comprehension has been blocked by the prevailing view that consciousness cannot be without self-consciousness and that self-consciousness is necessarily discursive, leaving self-consciousness something no mind lacking linguistic competence can possess. These dogmas prove to be insupportable once one recognizes that all mental processes involve self-relation, but not consciousness or self-consciousness, that self-consciousness itself depends upon consciousness as well as the pre-conscious psyche, and that linguistic intelligence cannot arise without there being both a non-discursive consciousness and a non-discursive self-consciousness. Self-consciousness cannot be achieved by any monological relation of consciousness to itself or to its own body. Instead, selfconsciousness can only be obtained through a non-cognitive relation of desire, which achieves abiding reality only in a reciprocal interaction of embodied selves desiring the desire of one another. Hegel’s account of recognitive desire provides us with the key to understanding the constitution of self-consciousness, provided we take seriously how that account does not presuppose linguistic intelligence and thought.