[Andrzej_Wiercinski_(ed ... - WordPress.com

inside me which makes me able to relate to the world around me. “Consciousness is aboveall consciousness of something which is other than itself, what we call self-consciousness,being on the contrary a derivative act whose essential nature is, indeed, rather uncertain;for we shall see in the sequel how difficult it is to succeed in getting a direct glimpse ofwhatever it is that we mean by self.” 27It is important to note that to understand that there is something outside me and that I canbe related to it only through my eyes does not yet mean that I perceive other “selves”provided with a consciousness. First I perceive a world outside me, an indistinctive wholeto which I am related but which is separate from me; I see nothing but other bodiesaround me. Only subsequently, once I have developed my consciousness, and thanks tothe perception of this indistinctive world, I can, so to speak, “argue from analogy” and graspthat the bodies of the other human beings hide a consciousness in the same way I hide itto their eyes. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that a difference between the way inwhich I perceive myself as consciousness and the way in which I perceive other humanbeings as consciousnesses, always remains. This happens just because the perception ofmyself as a consciousness is immediate, whereas the perception of other human beings asconsciousnesses is mediate; I distinguish them by analogy. This is also the reason why ahuman being always runs the risk of considering others simply as bodies, as tools whichI can use. 28This conception of body is very important within Marcel’s thought and has a lot ofconsequences within his way of thinking. In this regard, Paul Ricoeur has spoken aboutan absolute “Copernican revolution” which “returns to the subjectivity its privilege.” 29This is, in fact, a quite unique conception within Existentialism and within that Continentalthought which Existentialism has generated. Let us sum up: “The body that I call mybody is in fact only one body among many others, in relation to these other bodies, it hasbeen endowed with no special privileges whatsoever. It is not enough to say that this isobjectively true, it is the precondition of any sort of objectivity whatsoever, it is thefoundation of all scientific knowledge (in the case [sic] we are thinking of anatomy, ofphysiology, and all their connected disciplines).” 30From the other side: “The purely private self is an abstraction: the ego given in experienceis a being-by-participation. . . . we cannot effectively divorce the self from that in which itparticipates, because it is only the participation which allows there to be a self. Participation,in other words, is the foundation -- the only foundation -- for my experience of existence.”31 In other words, as Ricoeur emphasizes, “the first ontological position is neitherI existing nor thou existing but the co-esse.” 32At this point, the question is: how can I conceive myself as a unique and unrepeatableexistent and, at the same time, aim at a real sharing of judgment with other existents? 33Even if the first ontological position is the co-esse, how does this position legitimate thepossibility of any universality whatsoever?27Marcel, The Mystery of Being, 1: 52.28It is interesting to note that in the Foreword to the English translation of his La Métaphysique deJosiah Royce, as Royce’s Metaphysics, trans. Virginia and Gordon Ringer (Chicago: Regnery, 1956),Marcel gave Royce credit for having helped him in the “discovery” of the “Thou” as the necessary correlateof the “I.” See Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement, 454.29Paul Ricoeur, Philosophie de la volonté. I. Le volontaire et l’involontaire (Paris: Aubier, 1950), 33.30Marcel, The Mystery of Being, 1: 93.31Gallagher, The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, XI.32Ricoeur, “Gabriel Marcel and Phenomenology,” 484.33Marcel, Journal, 127.59