Self-consciousness need not posit the self as an object

Evidence

Now it might seem at first thought that this position would involve an infinite regress. For if the Cartesian cogito reflects not on itself but on the pre-reflective consciousness, then in order for there to be self-consciousness, it might seem that we should need a cogito for the Cartesian cogito, another for this cogito and so on ad infinitum. But this would be the case only if self-consciousness required that the self be posited as an object, and Sartre denies that this is so. The very nature of consciousness is such, he says, that for it, to be and to know itself are one and the same. (p. 112) Consciousness of an object is consciousness of being consciousness of an object. Thus by nature all consciousness is self-consciousness, but by this Sartre does not mean that the self is necessarily posited as an object. When I am aware of a chair, I am non-reflectively conscious of my awareness. But when I deliberately think of my awareness, this is a totally new act of consciousness; and here only am I explicitly positing my awareness or myself as an object of reflection. The pre-reflective cogito is a non-positional self-consciousness. Sartre uses the words conscience non-positionelle (de) soi and puts the de in parentheses to show that there is no separation, no positing of the self as an object of consciousness. Similarly he speaks of it as a non-thetic self-consciousness. Thetic or positional self-consciousness is conscience de soi in which consciousness deliberately reflects upon its own acts and states and in so far as is possible posits itself as an object. The Cartesian cogito, of course, belongs to the second order. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 10

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the pivotal non-positional/non-thetic self-consciousness and its contrast with reflexive thetic consciousness.
• XREF: This is the ground of bad faith and of the for-itself’s being-in-question; essential backdrop for Beauvoir’s ethics of ambiguity. — connects to: Consciousness of self is identical with consciousness of the object, not a separate act — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 134; Self-consciousness is not an added quality layered onto a psychic event; Self-avoidance differs from hiding external objects because the self is translucent — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 259 (+11 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The solution to the regress problem—consciousness’s being and knowing as one—is the deepest structural move of the whole ontology.

Broader Connections

• Consciousness of self is identical with consciousness of the object, not a separate act #qualifies (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 134
• Self-consciousness is not an added quality layered onto a psychic event #corroborates (0.85)