Band I/ 2013 (6,7mb) - critica – zeitschrift für philosophie ...

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distinction between actual, vivid consciousness
and representations it might possess and evolve.
Further, collective representation(s), in the sense
of being reached by summing up any individual
contribution of similar kind, are different and to
distinctively separate from any consciousness,
forming a real entity and comprising a plurality
of people, spontaneously instantiated by a group,
a faction of the population or even a nation (which
generally designated the limits of his investigation
and, accordingly, his reliance upon collective
consciousness). Besides, the class is generally not
pre-setting his lens, but, as a presupposition, generality
and collectivity should possess both a different
logical standing as well as origin still to be
explained.
Significantly, this real entity, if not a sociological
theorem in the sense of a ficticious unit conceived
of and used for the analysis and description by
means of imposed threads of delineation that
have to be pursued in order to follow and manifest
the thoughts, the behavior, and the latent or
obvious gestures of peculiar people being merged
to their societal entity, is also shaping the philosophical
problem: How should a real entity of consciousness
exist by itself, i.e. not depending on
actual perception and being driven by individual
motivation (in the real, simple and constitutive
sense) in order to be able to exert a special pressure,
the “contrainte,” on its complementary part,
the individual one, sole investigation of common
and classical philosophy? In comparison to the
traditional ontological question, not only things,
unless perceived or not, are critical, but with good
reason one must query further as to whether any
consciousness, and in particular that form by
means of which a collective sample must assemble
and essentially fuse, is still obstant and coexisting
under circumstances where, as a token of
individual consciousness, (i) actual perception is
taken away by any other perception or thought (or
even within sleep); or, a step further, (ii) is still accompanying
and/or parallelizing any instance of
distinct self-consciousness which otherwise, if
the standard claim is correct, should be able to run
along the whole delineation. As the philosophical
question par excellence since Kant, to the extent, it
did not charge, and especially not discard the Durkheimian
opposition. Yet on the whole one has
to involve it in order to be able to pass through
both claims: That collective consciousness, its
very pole, accompanies the individual in a critical
sense quite in the same manner as distinct selfconsciousness
is capable of, according to the classical
reading. In this context and not to overlook,
one must not confuse collective consciousness
with intersubjectivity, which in the meantime has
received important interpretations regarding the
transcendence of alterity, including a Husserlian
linkage to social understanding of phenomenological
consciousness in later writings. 12 The main
understanding of intersubjectivity does not take
its departure from the real division and polar divisibility
of consciousness; where, in comparison,
on one side the ›I‹ (absolved from absolute standing)
must reside unfolding its layers of intentionalities
against the other side realized by several
kinds and/or degrees of fusion of the collective
counterpart. According to Durkheim, it must express
an overall social constraint on the individual
one equivalent to the philosophical I and which,
by reason of self-fusion too (inserted here, and
taken seriously, i.e. not to mix with confusion), has
darkened the reception but cannot totally suspend
the existence of the divisibility.
II
So far, the topic, a query for musical meaning, has
passed over to the side where the conditions are
ruling. In addition, it has relied upon the polar
opposition as the explanation of the cardinal relationship,
why the general and the collective are
quite different and why fusion (as the constitutive
part of focus) plays a crucial part on both sides of
the opposition. Concerning his reception, a critical
author like Adorno, not willing to subscribe to
the ‘phantom’ of positivism or method of ‘pure’
objectivization (leaving the question of the subjective
contribution aside or even embezzled),
promptly answered to the question with an all-encompassing
rebuttal, that it represents the failure
12 See Zahavi, Subjectivity and Selfhood. Investigating the
First. Person Perspective. Cambridge: MIT Press 2005,
ch.6, 174.