Sense-Constituting Lived-Experiences as Egoic Acts

Abstract

All such lived-experiences are not only modes of consciousness in general, but egoic acts; and this is what we want to make clear 10 now. In the course of our psychic life, waking life is only one type; there is another one besides this one, deep dreamless sleep, unconsciousness. We arrive at both these types in their contrast by presentifying actual lived-experiences of awakening, by a retrospective intuitive grasping of preceding phases of 15 consciousness in comparison with wakefulness itself. Even if we cannot say anything in more detail at all about the content of what is past and about what is experienced in a torpid manner, we can describe with evidence the typical essence of the contrast. There is an experiencing taking place when in a stupor, as well. But there is 20 not perception in the genuine sense or an experience of another sort; there is nothing of a cognitive theme; there is nothing of a judgment; there is nothing of an object of an emotional interest; there is nothing properly speaking of an object being loved or hated at present, there is nothing of a desiring or a willing. What is 25 the distinguishing trait of such lived-experiences that, in the very broadest sense (a broadness that is certainly not customary), could be characterized as lived-experiences of interest, and that mark the wakeful psychic life with the character of wakefulness? We can respond: Psychic life is wakeful, that is, the ego is wakeful, and 30 this is the case insofar as it carries out specific egoic functions in the present, that is, carries out in the present an “I perceive”; that is to say, I turn toward an objectlike formation, viewing it, seeing it, I am absorbed in it; likewise, I remember, I am absorbed in viewing the memorial object; likewise, I make comparisons and 35 distinctions; in comparing I recognize that two different perceptual objects possess the same type; or I am inclined to love, to cherish