SEVEN PAPERS ON EXISTENTIAL ANALYSIS ... - Wagner College

alone, without objects of which there is consciousness. Second, each kind of object of
consciousness is answered by a different mode of being-consciousness, which is itself a relation
between the someone who is consciousness and an object of a certain kind (percept, memory,
image, fantasy, hallucination, and so on). An account of what happens when there is
consciousness must begin with the objects of consciousness, not with the other pole of the
relation of being-consciousness (the self). A basic characteristic of the objects of consciousness
is their kinetic nature. What at first glance seems to be distinctive only of memories applies
equally to all objects of which I am consciousness. I say of a recollection that "it came to me,"
but in perception, too, as well as in the other modes of being-consciousness, the object of which
I am consciousness comes to me and confronts me, even when this object is an absence, as it is
in the case of existential consciousness.
We term the objects of consciousness things. A thing may be real or imaginary, physical
or linguistic. Thing is the most general term we have for whatever can be an object of beingconsciousness,
which meets the things that come to it. Only what gives itself in confronting me
can be perceived or remembered, imaged or dreamed, willed or validated, as the case may
be. Phenomenological investigations have shown that perceptual consciousness grasps only
one "side" or profile of a thing at a time. An object of being-consciousness is subject to that
perspectival restriction determined by the particular setting, situation, or place when there is
consciousness. The notion of a "side" in phenomenology applies in general to the aspect of any
thing that presents itself to me in any mode of being-consciousness – except existential
consciousness. What I might perceive or otherwise make of what the other is is presented to me
perspectivally, but I am not presented with different sides of existence. Existence does not have
perspectives. When I say I have seen a side of someone that I "know only too well" or "had never
seen before," I am referring to what I take him to be, not to his existence.
Perceptual consciousness has been shown to depend to a marked degree on the status
of one's sensorium, but memory and imagination and the other modes of consciousness are also
affected by one's overall disposition. Existential consciousness, by contrast, is a matter of all or
nothing.
I. Consciousness and Existence
Let us look once again at the structure of being-consciousness in its relation to existence. Beingconsciousness
is the "face" of my existence. It is at the things of which I am consciousness. Beingconsciousness
is my existence at the things that confront me. In different terms, existential
consciousness is at the existence of the other. The characterization of consciousness in "where"
terms may mislead us to incorrectly suppose that consciousness is spatial, like the things in the
natural world that we experience, but only the body of the human being who is consciousness
(both the body he has and the body he is) is spatial. An object of which a human being is
consciousness is one pole of that relation we call being-consciousness, but it is equally true that
the body of the human being who is consciousness of such an object is also a point toward
which the relation is directed. Being-conscious might be represented in this way: ab, where a
is a modality of being consciousness, such as perception, and b is an object of that modality. My
being-consciousness, then, is directed both to me and to the objects that confront me. Empirical
psychologists have mistakenly assumed that consciousness is unidirectional, like an arrow, aimed
by an ego toward an object of interest to it (19).
With respect to the body of an other, when I validate his existence, my beingconsciousness
is at the body of an other (centered in his face, as it has been since infancy) as
much as it is at my own body (though it hard to localize that place in my body). What is meant
by "at" in these formulations? We may think of it as being used in a temporal sense, as in the
sentence "I will meet you at 10 o'clock this evening." To say that the consciousness I am is at its
object means that it confers on the thing my temporality, the time of my existence. Being-