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Discussing Jean-Paul Sarte’s The Transcendence of the Ego (written in 1934).
What is consciousness, and does it necessarily involve an “I” who is conscious of things? Sartre says no: typical experience is consciousness of some object and doesn’t involve the experience of myself as someone having this consciousness. It’s only when we reflect on our own conscious experiences that we posit this “I.” The ego is our own creation, or more precisely a social creation. This means that far from being some primordial structure of all experience, this transparent thing inside us that we have more immediate knowledge of than anything else, the ego is an object: it has parts we don’t see, and we can be wrong when we make judgments about it. Other people might even know us better than we know ourselves.
This is a difficult text, and we spend lots of time bickering about what Sartre might mean by terms like “transcendent” or “non-positional consciousness,” so surely you will love that. Read more about the topic.
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End song: “Thing in the World,” by Mark Lint. This song was begun around 1996 but mostly written and wholly recorded just now, with Mark playing all the instruments, with lyrics actually motivated by this Sartre reading.
Read more about the Close Reading product on Sartre described at the end of the episode. We’ll post an announcement if Wes’s Sartre notes are ever actually finished.
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#1 by Martin Larsson on December 2, 2011 - 11:37 am
Good looking philosopher? Kierkegaard is as close to a boy band member as you get: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%B8ren_Kierkegaard
#2 by PW on December 2, 2011 - 5:27 pm
Another great episode.
“The ego is an intellectual construct that defines itself through its reflection in the world” rough idea is developed in Hofstadter’s “Godel, Escher, Bach” and “Figments of reality” by Stewart and Cohen.
(Possibly this was mentioned in the podcast ..)
#3 by Masako on December 2, 2011 - 9:46 pm
Ludwig Wittgenstein is said to have been quite handsome. Part of his appeal, I suspect.
#4 by David Buchanan on December 13, 2011 - 11:06 pm
They say Bourdieu had his fair share of erotic capital and I’ve heard that Nietzsche was a real chick-magnet.
#5 by Kyle on December 25, 2011 - 10:42 pm
Nothing like listening to an excellent and very thought provoking discussion and then being overwhelmed by toilet humor….”Suddenly being overcome and filled with the quality of rupugnance and hatred when somebody farted in the room”
That cracked me up…
Although I would think the perception would be repugnance, and then hatred perhaps on reflection and rendering a judgment. Flatus does not usually inspire hatred.
#6 by dmf on February 6, 2012 - 8:50 am
here is a posting on Sartre that may tie in with issues raised in the ZAMM and M-Ponty pcasts that might be a nice lead in to structuralism and perhaps head us towards cybernetics:
http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2010/11/18/antipraxis/