Hans Driesch

"The consciousness" is ... a bad term for the indefinable and irreducible I. Our primordial fact (page 1), I consciously have something, must take place of "the consciousness".²⁰

    ²⁰ "The consciousness" is quite an impossible word for the soul or mind [etc].

(H. Driesch, Crisis in Psychology, London, Princeton, 1925, p. 72.)

Comment and so Professor Driesch had rather lightly consigned the soul and/or mind to the realm 'which is most decidedly unconscious' — the [etc] above.

Not to blame anyone for the sorts of "hit and/or miss" philosophy at the time, one might yet fumble some more ; this text by H. Driesch begins fundamentally with scio me scire, which Professor Driesch attributes to Augustine.

One notes that the perceptions of self can be said to be only a posteriori ; cogito, ergo sum, noticed Descartes. The cogito had naturally preceded the sum ; and this seems to me to be the natural order of perception — including self-perception.

Speaking about the 'consciousness' : One queries, the consciousness of what ; it seems to me that a fine point went unnoticed : the 'consciousness' would be indeed a bad term for the I, because it is I who am conscious — of something.

In other words, the term 'consciousness' alone leaves something missing. It happens to be a compound word, by the way : con - scio which implies there being two somewhat different or differing substances at least one of them capable of knowing (scio) the other.

The "consciousness" cannot be the I just as the argument of a mathematical function is not the value (of some actual variable or variables) —

Observing the 'multi-ordinality' (Korzybski) of terms (whether noticed or unnoticed by the several authors). With Thomas Paine, the soul was the 'consciousness of my own consciousness'.This rather neatly corresponds with the scio me scire attributed to Augustine.

If the compoundness of 'con - scio ' be considered, the consciousness of self reduces as two (or several) stages of one process. (Not that one would so often depend on the structures of the traditional languages ; this one instance here seems workable).

What was known by me before I had said "I" can be only considered after I had said "I" — as a matter of the natural order of consideration — insofar as any speaking about such questions goes.

The significance of such statements can be said to be immaterial : it does not in any way depend on the time or the location by one formulating them (writer) or one interpreting them (reader) ; the left-to-right order of writing (or reading) in the English language corresponds to the series of before-after actions (at writing or reading) by one at some actual location in space and time (this could be any at all).

This can put one in mind of Wittgenstein's propositions which, he said, can, like a ladder, be discarded after one had reached some higher plane.

What use : to clear some of the excrescent "foliage" (A. Crowley) of which the bulk of what has been usually known as 'philosophy' (often bordering with religion) apparently consists.

In the end one finds that Professor Driesch operated with a number of terms, such as 'soul', 'I' 'Ego', as if they were to denote some differing concepts or aspects of 'something'. Yet his 'entelechy' suggest an immaterial causal principle present in the operations by any forms of life.

One might venture to suppose that no differentiation of 'kind' is necessary regarding the immaterial principle ; one can actually question whether such distinctions can be valid at all.

Some complains sometimes made against the field of Psychical Research might be not altogether unjustified ; considering that the pioneers were few indeed, and of those few there were fewer who made at least some sense, the work by Hans Driesch might be of some particular importance. (WPT, Sept 07).