Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.12, 2018

 

Research on the Question of Self in the Integration of Phenomenology and Analytic Philosophy

(Abstract)

 

Li Zhongwei

 

Integrating as it does the relevant intellectual resources and methods in phenomenology and analytic philosophy, research on the self is manifest in the fact that, in accordance with the phenomenal self-approach, the experience of consciousness necessarily implies the existence of the subject of consciousness, and the subject of consciousness is the phenomenal self. Three theories of self have developed from this approach: the self as the momentary experience; the self as the ability to generate consciousness; and the self as the center of virtual phenomena. None of these three theories can solve the problem of the unity of the experience of consciousness in time. Making use of the intellectual resources of European phenomenology and drawing on the relevant theories in analytic philosophy enables us to obtain a theory of the primitive phenomenal self by returning to the realm of the experience of consciousness and taking consciousness of time as a starting point for reflecting on and analyzing the experience of consciousness itself. “The flow of absolute consciousness” contains the existence of the phenomenal self as the primordial self; neither absolute consciousness nor the primordial self is of time, but they are a priori conditions that make the consciousness of time possible. The concept of the primordial self is not only coherent but also truly able to explain the unity and subjectivity of the experience of consciousness.