Self-consciousness is not an added quality layered onto a psychic event

Evidence

It is not necessary to understand by this that on the one hand, some external cause (an organic trouble, an unconscious impulse, another Erlebnis) could determine that a psychic event—a pleasure, for example,—produce itself, and that on the other hand, this event so determined in its material structure should be compelled to produce itself as self-consciousness. This would be to make the non-thetic consciousness a quality of the positional consciousness (in the sense that the perception, positional consciousness of that table, would have as addition the quality of self-consciousness) and would thus fall back into the illusion of the theoretical primacy of knowledge. This would be moreover to make the psychic event a thing and to qualify it with “conscious” just as I can qualify this blotter with “red.” — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 135

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the target of Sartre’s critique: treating consciousness as a predicate, which he says collapses back into the ‘illusion of the theoretical primacy of knowledge.’
• XREF: connects to: Self-consciousness need not posit the self as an object — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 10; Self-consciousness no longer functions as an adequate foundation for thought — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 539; Psychic states are grasped only as shadows projected by reflected-on consciousness (+2 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Self-consciousness need not posit the self as an object — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 10; Self-consciousness no longer functions as an adequate foundation for thought — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 539; Psychic states are grasped only as shadows projected by reflected-on consciousness (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Self-consciousness no longer functions as an adequate foundation for thought #expands (0.82) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 539