Alexander, Contemplation, Enjoyment

Alexander introduces the terms 'contemplation' and 'enjoyment' to expose and avoid what he takes to be a traditional equivocation--'consciousness', as in 'consciousness of an external object', vs. 'consciousness', as in 'self-consciousness'--with 'enjoyment' not connoting 'accompanied by pleasure'. In other words, he holds that the relation of mind to an external object, and the accompanying one of mind to itself, are heterogeneous. As a precedent, he cites Spinoza's distinction, within the same experience, between an idea of the cause of a modification of the body, and an idea of that modification of the body. However, Alexander's reference is puzzling, since 'enjoyment', for him, is an intra-psychic relation, while Spinoza's idea of a modification of the body is not, plus, Alexander also distances himself from Spinoza's own intra-psychic relation, i. e. an idea of an idea. On the hand, a lineage with which Alexander could not be familiar seems to be the similarity between his contemplation/enjoyment pair and Sartre's eventual thetic/non-thetic contrast. Furthermore, the power of Alexander's projected Deity to contemplate enjoyment likewise resembles the structure of Sartre's 'God', namely, in-itself-for-itself. Still, Alexander does not seem to entertain a Kantian analysis--that experience consists in neither two homogeneous acts of consciousness, nor two heterogeneous ones, but, rather, one act, predicated alternatively of either an external object or of the experiencing subject.