Self-Consciousness

In its ordinary usage, 'self-conscious' usually describes an attitude of concern about one's appearance to others. In contrast, the formal Philosophical notion 'self-consciousness' denotes an entirely interior experience. In this case, the refined version fails to dissipate or to absorb to itself the informal one. Aristotle had established it, under the rubric of 'thought thinking itself'', as the perfection of rationality, i. e. a self-contained infinite process, that is therefore the highest form of human activity. Descartes revived the quest for it, in his isolation of the 'I think', but his apparent success was subsequently undermined by Locke and Hume, who show that what he secures is no more than a momentary empty abstraction, and Kant, who demonstrates formally that substantive consciousness of self is impossible without a consciousness of some outer object. The vanity of the project is perhaps most conclusively presented by Sartre, who shows how internal self-consciousness dissolves into an infinity of reflecting nothingnesses. On the other hand, fresh analyses in the past century have revealed the soundness of the everyday version. While Wittgenstein is often given the credit, the real pioneer of this line of thinking was George Mead, who contends that consciousness is fundamentally linguistic--the learning of language is the development of communication skills, and the latter, e. g. by a child, entails the interiorizing of those speaking to it, e. g. parents, so 'c0nsciousness' is the taking of the presumed perspective of those with whom one is communicating. Hence, according to this theory, consciousness is a socializing phenomena, and 'self'-consciousness is, precisely as the ordinary usage has it, an internal objectification of how others presumably see one. However, as compelling as this theory is, it falls short in one respect. The human organism plainly has an internal monitoring system of all its activities, and all its activities are, in one respect, or another, interactions with its environment. Hence, thinkers who have argued that the consciousness of some object always entails the consciousness of that consciousness, and, thus, self-consciousness, are correct, but have it backwards. Since the organism is naturally self-monitoring, self-consciousness is fundamental, and since all of its activities are either directly or indirectly outwardly directed, self-consciousness is at the same time a consciousness of at least something in its environment. Given the plausability of Mead's opposing analysis, a typical philosophical mistake at this juncture is to try to reduce one theory to the other. Instead, that we are subject to both internal and external scrutiny and demands, to be true to ourselves and to be considerate of others, presents an ethical, not a theoretical problem, solvable not by abstract systematization, but concretely, by trying to balance conflicting substantive practical claims, in action that is a comprehensive as possible.