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The Prereflective Cogito as Contaminated Opacity
Author(s) -
Westphal Merold
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
the southern journal of philosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.281
H-Index - 21
eISSN - 2041-6962
pISSN - 0038-4283
DOI - 10.1111/j.2041-6962.2007.tb00120.x
Subject(s) - cogito ergo sum , genitive case , subject (documents) , transitive relation , object (grammar) , linguistics , dative case , philosophy , consciousness , epistemology , noun , computer science , mathematics , combinatorics , library science
The “I think” that accompanies all my intentional acts is the prereflective cogito. It can be declined in the nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative cases: nominative because I am given to myself as a subject, genitive because each experiential awareness is mine, dative because the content of each awareness is given to me, and accusative because even as subject I am always given to myself as the object of the look and address of another. But it is a mistake to think of consciousness as “pure” by virtue of the formality of this structure. Even at the transcendental level, consciousness is contaminated by contingency and particularly in ways that render it opaque to itself in its relation to nature, society, and God.