Ryabushkina Tatyana
Abstract: The idea of pre-reflective consciousness arises in response to difficulties that occur in the process of searching for the foundation of the unity of our conscious experience. The basis of the experience could not be found in the experience itself and lies beyond the world of objects. Could we distinguish a single classical way of transcendence? If so, what is that way and what are its fundamental difficulties? Could the idea of prereflective consciousness be consid-ered as the basis of another method of transcendence? The author argues that the classical method of transcendence of the experience bases on temporality and substantiality – the structures that are found by the way of reflection. Being necessary for any experience, these characteristics are pro-jected to a source of experience and understood as characteristics of subjectivity. Sartre indicates that selfconsciousness is enclosed in the awareness of transcendent object. It is so-called prereflective self-consciousness. However, Sartre’s ‘pre-reflective’ self-consciousness is reflective self-consciousness. Indeed, the conscious as such is neither any object nor a collection of objects. The consciousness itself is Nothing – that is Sartre’s modification of substance. Time is the condi-tion of possibility of the consciousness. Reflexive transcendence always turns out to be unjusti-fied, since it is based only on positing of the immediate characteristics of subjectivity. What is another way of transcendence? The consciousness should be presented not as a kind of an imme-diate givenness, but rather as the result of self-knowledge. A certain “givenness” of subjectivity is the condition of possibility of the consciousness; however, this “givenness” could not be con-scious, i.e. available for reflection. We can only talk about the pre-reflective pre-conscious “givenness” of self, but this “givenness” is not something initially and directly accessible, but a result of pre-conscious cognition. Therefore, the object of self-knowledge could not be initially identical to the subject of self-knowledge.
Keywords: phenomenology, transcendent, subjectivity, temporality, substantiality, prereflective self-consciousness, core self-consciousness.