Subject (philosophy)
Encyclopedia
In philosophy
, a subject is a being that has subjective experiences, subjective consciousness
or a relationship with another entity (or "object
"). A subject is an observer and an object is a thing observed. This concept is especially important in continental philosophy
, where 'the Subject' is a central term in debates over human autonomy and the nature of the self.
The sharp distinction between subject and object corresponds to the distinction, in the philosophy of René Descartes
, between thought and extension. Descartes believed that thought (subjectivity) was the essence of the mind, and that extension (the occupation of space) was the essence of matter.
In the modern continental tradition
, which may plausibly be said to date from Descartes, debates over the nature of the Subject play a role comparable to debates over person
hood within the distinct Anglo-American tradition of analytical philosophy.
In critical theory
and psychology
, subjectivity is also the actions or discourses that produce individuals or 'I'—the 'I' is the subject.
began its career with the German Idealists, in response to David Hume
's radical skepticism
. The idealists' starting point was Hume's conclusion that there is nothing to the self over and above a big, fleeting bundle of perceptions. The next step was to ask how this undifferentiated bundle comes to be experienced as a unity - as a single subject. Hume had offered the following proposal:
Kant
, Hegel
and their successors sought to flesh out the process by which the subject is constituted out of the flow of sense impressions. Hegel, for example, stated in his Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit
that a subject is constituted by "the process of reflectively mediating itself with itself."
Hegel begins his definition of the subject at a standpoint derived from Aristotelian
physics: "the unmoved which is also self-moving" (Preface, pgph. 22). That is, what is not moved by an outside force, but which propels itself, has a prima facie case for subjectivity. Hegel's next step, however, is to identify this power to move, this unrest that is the subject, as pure negativity. Subjective self-motion, for Hegel, comes not from any pure or simple kernel of authentic individuality, but rather, it is
The Hegelian subject's modus operandi is therefore cutting, splitting and introducing distinctions by injecting negation into the flow of sense-perceptions. Subjectivity is thus a kind of structural effect - what happens when Nature is diffused, refracted around a field of negativity and the "unity of the subject" for Hegel, is in fact a second-order effect, a "negation of negation". The subject experiences itself as a unity only by purposively negating the very diversity it itself had produced. The Hegelian subject may therefore be characterized either as "self-restoring sameness" or else as "reflection in otherness within itself" (ibid.) In short, a subject in the Hegelian sense is subjected to subjection.
and Freud
provided a point of departure for questioning the notion of a unitary, autonomous Subject, which for many thinkers in the Continental tradition is seen as the foundation of the liberal theory of the social contract
. These thinkers opened up the way for the deconstruction
of the subject as a core-concept of metaphysics
.
Sigmund Freud's explorations of the unconscious mind
added up to a wholesale indictment of Enlightenment
notions of subjectivity.
Among the most radical re-thinkers of human self-consciousness was Heidegger
, whose concept of Dasein
or "Being-there" displaces traditional notions of the personal subject altogether.
Jacques Lacan
, inspired by Heidegger
and Saussure
, built on Freud's psychoanalytic model of the subject, in which the "split subject" is constituted by a double bind
: alienated from jouissance
when he or she leaves the Real
, enters into the Imaginary (during the mirror stage
), and separates from the Other
when he or she comes into the realm of language, difference, and demand
in the Symbolic
or the Name of the Father.
Thinkers such as Althusser
, Foucault
or Bourdieu
theorize the subject as a social construction. According to Althusser, the "subject" is an ideological construction (more exactly, constructed by the "Ideological State Apparatuses"). One's subjectivity exists, "always already" and is discovered through the process of interpellation. Ideology inaugurates one into being a subject.
According to Foucault, it is the "effect" of power and "disciplines
" (See Discipline and Punish
: construction of the subject as student, soldier, "criminal", etc.).
, the issue of subject—and more specifically the "point of view" of the subject, or "subjectivity" -- has received attention as one of the major intractable problems in philosophy of mind
(a related issue being the mind-body problem). In the essay What is it like to be a bat?, Thomas Nagel
famously argued that explaining subjective experience—the "what it is like" to be something—is currently beyond the reach of scientific inquiry, because scientific understanding by definition requires an objective perspective, which, according to Nagel, is diametrically opposed to the subjective first-person point of view. These additional features of subjective experience are often referred to as qualia
(see Frank Cameron Jackson
and Mary's room
).
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
, a subject is a being that has subjective experiences, subjective consciousness
Subjective consciousness
Subjective consciousness refers to a state of consciousness, in which a person is constantly aware of his or her self as well as outside factors. The study of this state has achieved high priority in the modern philosophy of mind, the mind-body problem or consciousness studies, as made popular by,...
or a relationship with another entity (or "object
Object (philosophy)
An object in philosophy is a technical term often used in contrast to the term subject. Consciousness is a state of cognition that includes the subject, which can never be doubted as only it can be the one who doubts, and some object or objects that may or may not have real existence without...
"). A subject is an observer and an object is a thing observed. This concept is especially important in continental philosophy
Continental philosophy
Continental philosophy, in contemporary usage, refers to a set of traditions of 19th and 20th century philosophy from mainland Europe. This sense of the term originated among English-speaking philosophers in the second half of the 20th century, who used it to refer to a range of thinkers and...
, where 'the Subject' is a central term in debates over human autonomy and the nature of the self.
The sharp distinction between subject and object corresponds to the distinction, in the philosophy of René Descartes
René Descartes
René Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...
, between thought and extension. Descartes believed that thought (subjectivity) was the essence of the mind, and that extension (the occupation of space) was the essence of matter.
In the modern continental tradition
Continental philosophy
Continental philosophy, in contemporary usage, refers to a set of traditions of 19th and 20th century philosophy from mainland Europe. This sense of the term originated among English-speaking philosophers in the second half of the 20th century, who used it to refer to a range of thinkers and...
, which may plausibly be said to date from Descartes, debates over the nature of the Subject play a role comparable to debates over person
Person
A person is a human being, or an entity that has certain capacities or attributes strongly associated with being human , for example in a particular moral or legal context...
hood within the distinct Anglo-American tradition of analytical philosophy.
In critical theory
Critical theory
Critical theory is an examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across the social sciences and humanities. The term has two different meanings with different origins and histories: one originating in sociology and the other in literary criticism...
and psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
, subjectivity is also the actions or discourses that produce individuals or 'I'—the 'I' is the subject.
The subject in German idealism
Subject as a key-term in thinking about human consciousnessConsciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
began its career with the German Idealists, in response to David Hume
David Hume
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
's radical skepticism
Skepticism
Skepticism has many definitions, but generally refers to any questioning attitude towards knowledge, facts, or opinions/beliefs stated as facts, or doubt regarding claims that are taken for granted elsewhere...
. The idealists' starting point was Hume's conclusion that there is nothing to the self over and above a big, fleeting bundle of perceptions. The next step was to ask how this undifferentiated bundle comes to be experienced as a unity - as a single subject. Hume had offered the following proposal:
- "...the imagination must by long custom acquire the same method of thinking, and run along the parts of space and time in conceiving its objects.
Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
, Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality as a whole revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism.Hegel developed a comprehensive...
and their successors sought to flesh out the process by which the subject is constituted out of the flow of sense impressions. Hegel, for example, stated in his Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit
Phenomenology of Spirit
Phänomenologie des Geistes is one of G.W.F. Hegel's most important philosophical works. It is translated as The Phenomenology of Spirit or The Phenomenology of Mind due to the dual meaning in the German word Geist. The book's working title, which also appeared in the first edition, was Science of...
that a subject is constituted by "the process of reflectively mediating itself with itself."
Hegel begins his definition of the subject at a standpoint derived from Aristotelian
Aristotelianism
Aristotelianism is a tradition of philosophy that takes its defining inspiration from the work of Aristotle. The works of Aristotle were initially defended by the members of the Peripatetic school, and, later on, by the Neoplatonists, who produced many commentaries on Aristotle's writings...
physics: "the unmoved which is also self-moving" (Preface, pgph. 22). That is, what is not moved by an outside force, but which propels itself, has a prima facie case for subjectivity. Hegel's next step, however, is to identify this power to move, this unrest that is the subject, as pure negativity. Subjective self-motion, for Hegel, comes not from any pure or simple kernel of authentic individuality, but rather, it is
-
- "...the bifurcation of the simple; it is the doubling which sets up opposition, and then again the negation of this indifferent diversity and of its anti-thesis" (Preface, pgph. 18).
The Hegelian subject's modus operandi is therefore cutting, splitting and introducing distinctions by injecting negation into the flow of sense-perceptions. Subjectivity is thus a kind of structural effect - what happens when Nature is diffused, refracted around a field of negativity and the "unity of the subject" for Hegel, is in fact a second-order effect, a "negation of negation". The subject experiences itself as a unity only by purposively negating the very diversity it itself had produced. The Hegelian subject may therefore be characterized either as "self-restoring sameness" or else as "reflection in otherness within itself" (ibid.) In short, a subject in the Hegelian sense is subjected to subjection.
Postmodern subjects
The thinking of MarxKarl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
and Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
provided a point of departure for questioning the notion of a unitary, autonomous Subject, which for many thinkers in the Continental tradition is seen as the foundation of the liberal theory of the social contract
Social contract
The social contract is an intellectual device intended to explain the appropriate relationship between individuals and their governments. Social contract arguments assert that individuals unite into political societies by a process of mutual consent, agreeing to abide by common rules and accept...
. These thinkers opened up the way for the deconstruction
Deconstruction
Deconstruction is a term introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida in his 1967 book Of Grammatology. Although he carefully avoided defining the term directly, he sought to apply Martin Heidegger's concept of Destruktion or Abbau, to textual reading...
of the subject as a core-concept of metaphysics
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
.
Sigmund Freud's explorations of the unconscious mind
Unconscious mind
The unconscious mind is a term coined by the 18th century German romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge...
added up to a wholesale indictment of Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
notions of subjectivity.
Among the most radical re-thinkers of human self-consciousness was Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...
, whose concept of Dasein
Dasein
Dasein is a German word famously used by Martin Heidegger in his magnum opus Being and Time, which generally translates to being in its ontological and philosophical sense Dasein is a German word famously used by Martin Heidegger in his magnum opus Being and Time, which generally translates to...
or "Being-there" displaces traditional notions of the personal subject altogether.
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...
, inspired by Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...
and Saussure
Ferdinand de Saussure
Ferdinand de Saussure was a Swiss linguist whose ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century. He is widely considered one of the fathers of 20th-century linguistics...
, built on Freud's psychoanalytic model of the subject, in which the "split subject" is constituted by a double bind
Double bind
A double bind is an emotionally distressing dilemma in communication in which an individual receives two or more conflicting messages, in which one message negates the other. This creates a situation in which a successful response to one message results in a failed response to the other , so that...
: alienated from jouissance
Jouissance
The term jouissance, in French, denotes "pleasure" or "enjoyment." The term has a sexual connotation lacking in the English word "enjoyment", and is therefore left untranslated in English editions of the works of Jacques Lacan. In his Seminar "The Ethics of Psychoanalysis" Lacan develops his...
when he or she leaves the Real
The Real
The Real refers to that which is authentic, the unchangeable truth in reference both to being/the Self and the external dimension of experience, also referred to as the infinite and absolute - as opposed to a reality based on sense perception and the material order.-In psychoanalysis:The Real is a...
, enters into the Imaginary (during the mirror stage
Mirror stage
The mirror stage is a concept in the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan. Philosopher Raymond Tallis describes the mirror stage as "the cornerstone of Lacan’s oeuvre."...
), and separates from the Other
Other
The Other or Constitutive Other is a key concept in continental philosophy; it opposes the Same. The Other refers, or attempts to refer, to that which is Other than the initial concept being considered...
when he or she comes into the realm of language, difference, and demand
Demand (psychoanalysis)
'In Lacan, demand appears to be a generic term designating the symbolic, significant site in which the primordial desire is gradually alienated'. 'The concept of demand is not Freudian...
in the Symbolic
The Symbolic
The Symbolic is a part of the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, part of his attempt 'to distinguish between those elementary registers whose grounding I later put forward in these terms: the symbolic, the imaginary, and the real - a distinction never previously made in psychoanalysis'.-The...
or the Name of the Father.
Thinkers such as Althusser
Louis Althusser
Louis Pierre Althusser was a French Marxist philosopher. He was born in Algeria and studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy....
, Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
or Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu was a French sociologist, anthropologist, and philosopher.Starting from the role of economic capital for social positioning, Bourdieu pioneered investigative frameworks and terminologies such as cultural, social, and symbolic capital, and the concepts of habitus, field or location,...
theorize the subject as a social construction. According to Althusser, the "subject" is an ideological construction (more exactly, constructed by the "Ideological State Apparatuses"). One's subjectivity exists, "always already" and is discovered through the process of interpellation. Ideology inaugurates one into being a subject.
According to Foucault, it is the "effect" of power and "disciplines
Disciplinary institutions
Disciplinary institutions is a concept proposed by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish . School, prison, barracks or the hospital are examples of historical disciplinary institutions, all created in their modern form in the 19th century with the Industrial Revolution...
" (See Discipline and Punish
Discipline and Punish
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison is a book by philosopher Michel Foucault. Originally published in 1975 in France under the title Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la Prison, it was translated into English in 1977. It is an interrogation of the social and theoretical mechanisms behind...
: construction of the subject as student, soldier, "criminal", etc.).
Subjectivity in analytic philosophy
In contemporary analytic philosophyAnalytic philosophy
Analytic philosophy is a generic term for a style of philosophy that came to dominate English-speaking countries in the 20th century...
, the issue of subject—and more specifically the "point of view" of the subject, or "subjectivity" -- has received attention as one of the major intractable problems in philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain. The mind-body problem, i.e...
(a related issue being the mind-body problem). In the essay What is it like to be a bat?, Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel is an American philosopher, currently University Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University, where he has taught since 1980. His main areas of philosophical interest are philosophy of mind, political philosophy and ethics...
famously argued that explaining subjective experience—the "what it is like" to be something—is currently beyond the reach of scientific inquiry, because scientific understanding by definition requires an objective perspective, which, according to Nagel, is diametrically opposed to the subjective first-person point of view. These additional features of subjective experience are often referred to as qualia
Qualia
Qualia , singular "quale" , from a Latin word meaning for "what sort" or "what kind," is a term used in philosophy to refer to subjective conscious experiences as 'raw feels'. Examples of qualia are the pain of a headache, the taste of wine, the experience of taking a recreational drug, or the...
(see Frank Cameron Jackson
Frank Cameron Jackson
Frank Cameron Jackson is an Australian philosopher, currently Distinguished Professor and former Director of the Research School of Social Sciences at Australian National University. In 2007-2008, he also became a regular visiting professor of philosophy at Princeton University...
and Mary's room
Mary's room
Mary's room is a philosophical thought experiment proposed by Frank Jackson in his article "Epiphenomenal Qualia" and extended in "What Mary Didn't Know"...
).
See also
Philosophers
- Rudolf CarnapRudolf CarnapRudolf Carnap was an influential German-born philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a major member of the Vienna Circle and an advocate of logical positivism....
- David HumeDavid HumeDavid Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
- C. L. Stevenson
- Søren KierkegaardSøren KierkegaardSøren Aabye Kierkegaard was a Danish Christian philosopher, theologian and religious author. He was a critic of idealist intellectuals and philosophers of his time, such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel...
- Daniel KolakDaniel KolakDaniel Kolak is a Croatian-American philosopher who works primarily in philosophy of mind, personal identity, cognitive science, philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of logic, philosophy of religion, and aesthetics...