Reflection transforms lived pain into a psychic object at a distance
Evidence
But now suppose that I suddenly cease to read and am at present absorbed in apprehending my pain. This means that I direct a reflective consciousness on my present consciousness or consciousness-as-vision. Thus the actual texture of my consciousness reflected-on—in particular my pain—is apprehended and posited by my reflective consciousness. We must recall here what we said concerning reflection: it is a total grasp without a point of view; it is a knowledge which overflows itself and which tends to be objectivized, to project the known at a distance so as to be able to contemplate it and to think it. The first movement of reflection is therefore to transcend the pure quality of consciousness in pain toward a pain-as-object. Thus if we restrict ourselves to what we have called an accessory reflection, reflection tends to make of pain something psychic. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 882
Categorization
- DEFINE: Accessory reflection defined as the objectivizing movement that turns pure experienced quality into a psychic object.
- XREF: Sets up the distinction between reflective and unreflective consciousness that structures Beauvoir’s reading of Sartre; the reflective grasp ‘without a point of view’ echoes later phenomenological accounts. — connects to: Psychic states are grasped only as shadows projected by reflected-on consciousness; Being reflected upon gives consciousness a sense of having an outside; Absorbed activity makes pain present yet un-noticed until reflection. (+3 more)