John Dunn

Dante Gabriel Rossetti: The Salutation of Beatrice

Self and not-self

Here we come to Fichte’s concept of encounter, which would certainly become central to my ‘who am I?’ quest. Fichte argued that up-bringing, or education, amounted to a summoning, a call to encounter in the ‘outer’ world an instance of subjectivity other than oneself. He invited his readers to imagine the first encounter of two human beings, i.e. how otherwise entirely solitary human beings would react upon meeting one another for the very first time. The summoning to a mutuality of the experience, a ‘reciprocal interaction,’ leads to a synthesis that is uniquely human, with potential for change on a cosmic scale. An encounter with the unpredictable other leads to a recognition of:

me as a rational being in conformity with his and my consciousness, synthetically united in one (i.e. in conformity with a consciousness common to both of us) such that – just as surely as he wants to be regarded as a rational being – I can compel him to acknowledge that he knows that I am one as well.

Before the synthesis there was self and not-self. Each was in a state of hypostasis without the other. But in a chance encounter, thesis (self) meets antithesis (not-self) resulting in synthesis (the triadic progression later commandeered and adapted to their own ends by Hegel, Marx and Engels). Out of the web of syntheses comes the uniquely human capacity to transcend the confines of the natural world and realise freedom. Such is the basis of human creativity that in the words of Dante’s Beatrice makes man ‘the odd one out’.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

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