[Andrzej_Wiercinski_(ed ... - WordPress.com

of a self-aware being. In this context, Georg Ernst Stahl (1660-1734) appears as a decisiveinterlocutor. He represents the project of “realizing the soul outside of consciousness,” 37which is the path taken by a metaphysics that tries to see the soul as an objective causeof thinking -- as if the sole cause of the “effects” of life were reducible to a “secret power,separated from the self.” 38 By doing so, however, Stahl is actually attributing, as thecause of vital and intellectual activity, what he previously excluded from the activities ofthe self. 39Now, what de Biran indicates, first of all, is that the sum of venturesome ways ofsearching for causes from an external point of view is insufficient and far from coveringthe whole experience called “cause.” This is confirmed, straight away, by the fact that themodel of thinking that is taken on by those who subscribe to this point of view rests ona forgetfulness: it is from the personal individuality, just as it is felt, that one borrows thenotion both of an objective individuality and of an individual cause. For de Biran, thereis an experience of “cause” which is first in view when thinking of the causality of thenew sciences, that is, the experience of being cause. This is seemingly strange when wetry to find it in objective grounds for something, but clear and familiar when we recognizethe chosen model in the required effort. In other words, “the act or movement that followsor accompanies the effort (of thinking) created by the self can only be perceived as a voluntaryproduct in the feeling of its cause or in the reflected idea of the will.” 40 Consciousness,self, person, or will, are consequently many ways of understanding one fact: the intimatefeeling of personal existence, gained in an immediate apperception that includes a “hyperorganic”force and the resistance of the body to it. Ultimately therefore, to the search forthe beginning of thinking should correspond the task of inquiring into the nature of theboundaries that “separate” the human being as studied by physiologists in his or her simplevitality, from the being that thinks feeling and feels thinking, doubling its humanity. 41We will then discover that, at the heart of this “separation,” there is a transition, whosereach few have understood thus far. A transition, on the one hand, between the exteriorityof physiological conditions and the sensible experience they induce, and on the other hand,the reflected idea of will comprised in the apperception which establishes consciousness.42The analytical path thus proposed must therefore be capable of enlightening us as tothe roots of that particular (and sui generis 43 ) power of the will and of action, whichbelongs intrinsically to the person. In order to achieve this, it is not enough to follow thecriteria adopted by the physiologist, who is solely concerned with the external aspects ofthat action, seeking to determine, by way of experiment, the organic causes contributingto the interactions of, for instance, the muscular contractility susceptible to being translatedinto objective images. Instead, it is the point of view concerned with the inner aspectsthat we must follow, that is, “the one that does not search, in those muscular functions, foranything other than the part likely to be played by consciousness in all this, namely, theperception corresponding to this interplay, or to the power of the self … which manifests it,37De Biran, Décomposition, 33. In the reflective feeling of his own existence, Stahl finds a forcethat acts when it becomes aware of itself; but, strangely enough, having thus touched the essential point,he lets it slip through his fingers, for he immediately abstracts the apperception and keeps only theactivity, extending it, as a power and entirely observable henceforth, to the most hidden functions.38Ibid., 33; 87ff.39Montebello, Décomposition, 87.40De Biran, Décomposition, 47.41Ibid., 45; 90; 91; 444. Maine de Biran, Rapport du physique et du moral de l’homme (Paris: Vrin,1984) VI, 110, 191; idem, De l’aperception (Paris: Vrin, 1995) IV, 197.42Montebello, Décomposition, 76.43De Biran, Décomposition, 102.119