Consciousness is connected with the fact that a subject is aware and open to the manifestation of whatever appears. Existence, by contrast, is used to express the fact that something is given in experience, is present, or is real. Usually, the two notions are taken to be somehow related. This chapter suggests that existence is at best introduced as a metaphysical (or meta-experiential) concept that inevitably escapes the domain of conscious experience. In order to illustrate this claim, two case studies are considered. The first case is provided by Descartes’s famous treatment of consciousness and existence in his Meditations on First Philosophy. The second case is meant to contrast the Cartesian approach by taking the opposite route, as delineated by Emanuele Severino (1929–2020) in his ‘fundamental ontology’.
University of Groningen, Netherlands - ORCID: 0000-0001-7529-9826
Titolo del capitolo
Consciousness without Existence: Descartes, Severino and the Interpretation of Experience
Autori
Andrea Sangiacomo
Lingua
English
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-0169-8.10
Opera sottoposta a peer review
Anno di pubblicazione
2023
Copyright
© 2023 Author(s)
Licenza d'uso
Licenza dei metadati
Titolo del libro
Reading Descartes
Sottotitolo del libro
Consciousness, Body, and Reasoning
Curatori
Andrea Strazzoni, Marco Sgarbi
Opera sottoposta a peer review
Numero di pagine
206
Anno di pubblicazione
2023
Copyright
© 2023 Author(s)
Licenza d'uso
Licenza dei metadati
Editore
Firenze University Press
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-0169-8
ISBN Print
979-12-215-0168-1
eISBN (pdf)
979-12-215-0169-8
eISBN (epub)
979-12-215-0170-4
Collana
Knowledge and its Histories