"Философское" - читать интересную книгу автора (Джин Нодар)

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In what way are non-consciousness and creativity linked with the cardinal problem of existence? What are the general and concrete „issues“ of the theme we have selected? The answer le suggested in the schema of which we present a concise outline below.

As is known, the agonizing „truth“ about the inevitable end was discovered by human consciousness. This tragic discovery is connected with the fruit of the tree of knowledge. The serpent, or consciousness, led Adam and Eve to leave Eden of their own free will, Eden which embodied harmonious oneness, the oneness of man and the Universe. Eden preserved man from the knowledge of death and, consequently, from death itself. If it had not been for the fruit the serpent beguiled Eve with, if it had not been for consciousness, there would not have finally emerged the tower of Babel of homo-centrism, that tremendous self-deception.

Having withdrawn and having been expelled from Eden, man comprehended the inevitability of death and began to perceive „the futility and uselessness“ of his labors „under the Sun“. Outside the walls of Paradise, he began to reflect, to „cognize“, to philosophize or, as M. Montaigne put it, „to learn to die“. Armed with knowledge, man found himself face to face with the problem of the meaning and the aim of existence; cogito turned out, in the long run, to be the symbol of despondency, an index of scepticism, of the end, of a week will, of hopelessness. But despite the full clarity of this initial situation (comprehension of the finite nature of existence and futility of any activity), man, so to say, from the very first minute manifested something that should be called the greatest paradox: the paradox of continuing to live, the paradox of vitality. (Ecclesiastes, that most depressing of all books, a book which, from verse to verse enhances the sense of futility of existence, of unfathomable darkness, — ends in a paradoxical adjuration to go on following, the path of life). Despite the paralyzing content of knowledge (cogito, da'at), man goes on living and creating, obeying something as yet unnamed, and he lives on, i.e. from day to day, nearing the grave with an inexhaustive and unaccountable charge of optimism in his soul. (Schopenhauer, a man who, together with Ecclesiastes and Buddists, keenly felt „the reality“ of the pessimistic impulse, was, as is known, „the most jovial“ of men. What, then, is the motive.force?

Evidently, it is not consciousness. If we may resort to such an obviously conventional term, it is something else, namely, non-consciousness. This force, permeating the whole Universe and, therefore, present in man, constitutes his essential force. Despite cogito, it causes man to create, causes him to forget that of which man is fully aware, that is makes him forget, even at the last moment of his life, that it is really his last moment. Owing to this force, the sense of his non-finitness is unconsciously fortified in man, as well as his sense of being part of a non-finite world, of his link with that which, for Reason, is only „has been“ or „will be“. A sense of not supra-temporality, but of extra-temporality. This sense — a state of being firmly set in the world, is given to man not by argumentation, not by logic, but by something much broader.

The only thing that is known about this „something“ is that it is not consciousness. Any other definition would be unwarranted, as long as we attempt to fit it in any possible rationalistic category. Meanwhile, history can tell us about a number of attempts to comprehend this 'something», i.e., the structure of the sphere of the «non-conscious», attempts made earlier from mystical positions (the divine will), and now — from rationalistic positions (for example, the un-conscious in the school of psychoanalysis). Rationalists (Freud) understood «non-consciousness» as, for instance, an inconceivable experience of stable individual or collective psychic sets: the incest complex, the complex of original sin, etc. The search for rationalistic strata in the sphere of the «non-conscious» attempts to schematize something which, as a whole, does not lent itself to schematization, — all this is not, maybe, entirely groundless; however, the line of «non-consciousness» cannot be reduced to this. The presence of rationalistically explicable elements is explained and conditioned here by the fact that the illuminated portion of the «venue» begins and continues in the «blacked-out» portion, or, to put it more exactly, in the portion invisible to the eye. It is just these zones of junction, of transition, border zones that are, as a rule, investigated by researchers into the unconscious. And they investigate just what reason may investigate: the structure of consciousness and its zones bordering on the non-conscious. Investigation of the rules and mechanisms of transition of one into the other, etc.

However, the problem, as we interpret it, does not permit us to quite stop at this and requires further discussion.