The ‘I’ in philosophy is the principle of subjectivity, thinking activities to which has been often attributed a particular value because it is the hub from which the same philosophical reflection comes out. The concept of 'I' in fact corresponds to the moment when ‘the thinking’ and ‘the thought’ were the same reality as the thought: when ‘I’ reflect on me, subject and object coincide and no longer have a connotation that differentiates them.
It seems fair to me to say that the subjectivity of the subject resolves entirely in the presence of the object. Subject and object are two distinct concepts but not separable, since ‘the one’ is such, thanks to the presence of the other.
For space reason, I can refer to only a part of the vast and ‘dense’ literature.
The intellectual intuition was first revalued by Fichte and Schelling, according to whom it was a superior and a priori form of thought than the logical-dialectical one, not ‘objectifiable’, otherwise it would mean making objective what is subjective, which is a logical contradiction. As it cannot be proven, it should be placed as an act of faith, which - nonetheless - is not irrational, being transcendental or founding rationality itself.
Starting from Heidegger, Levinas calls into question the primacy of the problem of ‘being’, dominated by the principle of totality, to look in the appeal of ‘alterity’ the foundation of authentic subjectivity.
Husserl introduced the method of phenomenological reduction, which proceeds through the epoché and the transcendental reduction not to suspend judgment on the existence of the world, but also to bring it back to the subjectivity, pure or absolute.
To the construction of the whole edifice of knowledge, to the certainty of a pure, but singular Ego, it occurred the awareness that is constitutive of ego, its relationship with the ‘other’ and that subjectivity and inter-subjectivity be inextricably linked.
Andrea Altobrando, Research Fellow at the Hokkaido University of Sapporo (Japan) writes in the publication entitled: "Husserl and the problem of the monad":
“the proposal of a ‘monadology’ and a relative monadologic conception made by Husserl, has given rise to interpretations, reflections and criticisms that have first insisted on the fact that, in the Husserl perspective, the Monad "has windows", and it has been intended to highlight the significance in relation to the issues of inter-subjectivity. Much less has been investigated on what is "inside" the space that windows would delimit and how it is organized. Little attention has generally been devoted to what consequences stem from the conception of subjectivity as a monad "on this side" of its possible ways of communication.
The rupture of the totality is represented by human subjectivity, redefined by Levinas in the face that expresses the mystery of the subject. Society will be based on an inter-subjective relationship that does not abolish ‘the other’, but respects the mystery. The ‘other’ is subjectivity that transcends the totality.
Jaspers, referring to the words of Aristotle ("soul is, in a sense, everything"), underlined the need to recover that consciousness of the reciprocal relationship subject / object from which science has set out, which assumed to be able to leave out subjectivity.
The return of self consciousness means, at a first time, to experience the void of external objects, uncovering as self-consciousness. In a second time, to overcome the subjective or inadequate representations of self-consciousness and to discover to be objective self-consciousness. Finally, to get over the immediate and unconscious form of this actuality to achieve the self-conscious union of objective self-consciousness and subjective substance.
Sartre recognizes to man an absolute and unconditional freedom, which is expressed in dialectical form, whose subjectivity is dependent on socio-environmental objectivity as its "field of possibilities": a freedom thus become conditioned because is in relation to a large background of need.
The foregoing and partial summary, limited due to space, seems it could give a first test of the variety of thought on subjectivity. It is up to the reader of this note to judge whether there is a common ground among scholars of different trends and vocational training.
But can one get rid of the 'I' concept, subjective or otherwise, from one's personality?
Thank You so much for the detailed information.
In m"My semiotics" as a matter of fact, to my modest knowledge, what we have is something that we call a "basic semiotic function", but we also have something that they call an interpretative and cognitive science on meaning.
Uniting meaning and form was what firstly used to be called semiology, and/or what used to be called linguistically and psychologically based semiotics. To,e Ch. S. Peirce changed methodologies of research with his triads, ets. However, the difference lied on the research method.
Recently, everything can be contested in semiotics: either an obejcetvely minded one, or a process of its "objectification" and/or inter-subjectivity ( Deely, 2009) or purely subjectivization. The main division is based on, to my view again, the difference between the "ontological" and "epistemological" kind of viewing matters related to semiotics.
In conclusion, using the "I" and/or as I like to express myself, after all, theory of probability, is one of the solution. Why? Because of the fact that not only one meaning is possible: therefore , the interpretative territory to me is still undefined, open, and has multiple solutions. After all, Eco's (1962) theory of the openness of a work of art relied on such issues. if everything should rely on relations, then, again philosophy is the clue ( Deely, 2009), as such should be the ground of semiotics.
And , finally existentialism as seen in the eyes of Heidegger, Jaspers , etc., also may precondition a semiotic discourse, as given in Tarasti's paradigm "Existential Semiotics" (2000).
My view is that there should be a new theoretical approach which shall unite approaches to subjectivity and/or the subjectivizing processes ( Greimas and Fontanille, 1993), so as to deduce or emanate meaning. Semiotics treats a process a decomposition of given units. Finally. "I" or the "ego" even psychologically has the right to interpret in its determined theoretical terms.
My answer to Your very important question is yes, in one sentence: because of the fact not only what is thought to be true can be true> On the contrary, many other "truths" can be true for a philosopher and a semiotician.
Thank You so much indeed for the very important question and detailed explication, which to my modest opinion, shall always be open to discussions and scholarly treatments.
Bujar.
Dear professor Tucci,
For Dilthey, Hodges argues, "it is a fundamental characteristic of mental life that in one way or another it expresses or “objectifies” itself: " and "expression is the medium through which we know other minds.” He offers the following instance:
''. . . I see a human figure in a downcast attitude, the face marked with tears ; these are the expressions of grief, and I cannot normally perceive them without feeling in myself a reverberation of the grief which they express. Though native to another mind than mine, and forming part of a mental history which is not mine, it none the less comes alive in me, or sets up an image or reproduction of itself (Nachbild) in my consciousness. Upon this foundation all my understanding of the other person is built.
.....This power of expressions to evoke what they express is the basis of all communication and all sharing of experience between human beings. It is not an inferential process. When I see the stricken figure I do not begin by recognizing the attitude as the attitude typical of grief, and conclude from this that the person before me is experiencing grief. The mere sight of the expression awakens in me an immediate response, not intellectual, but emotional, feeling arouses feeling with no other intermediary than the expression itself. Dilthey remarks that what happens in me on such an occasion is the same as what happens in the other person whom I understand, only as it were in reverse. In him a lived experience has externalized itself in an expression. in me, a perceived expression has internalized itself in the shape of a Nachbild of the experience expressed. Guided by the other person 's expression, I live over 'again (nacherlebe) his experience in my own consciousness, and this is the essence of understanding. “To reproduce is to re live" (Nachbilden ist eben ein Nacherleben).
.....When I thus re live someone's experience, the Nachbild of his experience in my mind both is and is not a part of my own mental history. It is, in the sense that it is I who am conscious of it, it belongs to my unity of apperception. It is not, in the sense that it is not my personal response to circumstances affecting me personally, but a reflection in me of someone else's response to circumstances affecting him. It is, so to say, distanced from the stream of my own life, eingeklammert or bracketed off', and ascribed by me to the other person. This again is not an act of deliberate judgment. I do not begin by observing the presence of a feeling in my mind and then judge that it is a reflection of something in his, but it is immediately projected and perceived by me as his. This projection Dilthey calls a “transposition of myself “(Uebertragung, Transposition, Sichhineinversetzen). It means perceiving the other person as possessed of an inner life essentially like my own, and so “rediscovering myself in the Thou " (das Verstehen ist ein Wiederfinden des Ich im Du). (Hodges, 1949, 14-15)
Source: http://c-cs.us/configuring/Dilthey.html
Dilthey had discovered the essential re-enactment nature of human mind. The discovery of the mirror neurons is the beginning of understanding the mechanisms supporting this capacity. I personnally think that the whole mammalian evolution has put in place in our primate ancestors all the re-enactment capacities but those were used integrally for the purpose of perception and action , principally for learning but totally sub-consciously and outside attentional control. These re-enactment capacities are like the narrative fundantion of live action, like the action repertoire out of which all scenarios are composed. Humanity evolved through a slight change in the attentional control which allow control over re-enactment as in the example of Dilthey. The re-enactment by the of the . There is a single actor re-enacting all other and empathy is the key to the re-enactment room.
Regards
I guess it is not really the "i", but the "one-sided person-point-of-view". The "he" or the "you" also manifests subjectivity.
Nowadays we cannot circumscribe ourselves to Western philosophy. In the fourth century CE Indian philosopher Dignaga put forward the twofold concept indicated by the terms svasamvedana and svasamvittih: on the one side, the terms referred to a nondual, non-thetic, non-positional, non-reflexive awareness; on the other, it referred to the nondual, non-thetic, non-positional, non-reflexive awareness (of) dualistic, thetic, positional consciousness of object in which the consciousness in question is reflexive (qua nondual, non-thetic, non-positional, non-reflexive awareness that the dualistic, thetic, positional consciousness is perceiving).
Sartre (from whose original French—as different from Hazel Barnes' mistranslation—I took the "of" within parentheses used above) criticized Husserl's reedition of the Cartesian cogito, noting that consciousness is not in any way substantial. Actually, what was written above shows that dualistic consciousness (the cogito) is no more than a dualistic appearance in a nondual awareness that distorts the original nondual character of this awareness. This goes beyond Sartre, but not so beyond Eastern philosophies related to Dignaga's.
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