According to the Central Argument the relationship between consciousness and self bears the same structure as that between consciousness and world. The self and the world are thus linked to each other as "two objects of absolute, impersonal consciousness" (Ibid, 57). As a philosophy of human experience7, this account of the relationship between self and world seems to leave out too many aspects of our actual experience to provide a satisfactory theory. Looking at the counterexamples above – the reading example and the education example – it seems quite clear that consciousness is not a function disconnected from the rest of the person; and that the complexity of the human person cannot be reduced to the "self-consciousness" relationship. Rather than simplify the interaction between consciousness, self, and world into an intelligible geometric structure (Bachelard [1958] 1994, 215), let's look at an example that might further blur such distinctions. The Poetry Example Consider the following lines from Wallace Stevens' poem “The Idea of Order at Key West” ([1923] 1993, 62): It was his voice that made the sky sharper in its fading. He measured his loneliness every hour. he was the sole creator of the world in which he sang. We will consider two different agents involved here; the person in the poem and the reader or addressee. But let's first analyze this example from the point of view of the Central Argument of Sartre's theory. These lines therefore form an object in the world; call it x. Now consider a person A who is confronted with x for the first time. To explain this through the Central Argument we should divide A into the consciousness (C) and self (a) of person A, and... in the center of the paper... the choice of the person, we must look at the human being in his entirety. Sartre's theory of consciousness fails to recognize that, despite our similarities, we are all particular beings, and that this circumstance shapes not simply an object he calls the "self," but the entire conscious person. This conscious person is what we normally call ourselves. As such, we relate to the world in many different ways, but hardly as an object without the power to leave its mark on us as conscious beings. Works Cited Bachelard, Gaston ([1958] 1994), The Poetics of Space, Boston, Beacon Press .Camus, Albert ([1955] 1991), The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, New York, Vintage International.Sartre, Jean- Paul ([1965] 2003), The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, edited by Robert Denoon Cumming. New York, Vintage Books.Stevens, Wallace ([1923] 1993), Poems, New York, Alfred A. Knopf.
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