Skip to content
Chapter VI: The Emergence of the Self-Defining Consciousness
Dewart argues that the evolution of human nature has passed through two distinct stages: the first marked by the development of non-thematic speech and immediate consciousness, and the second by the emergence of thematic speech, narrative thought, and self-defining consciousness. The chapter explores the origin of thematic speech, the emergence of self-definition, the human need for self-definition, and the institutions and limits of self-definition.
From Simple Speech to Complex Thought
Early humans first learned to speak in a simple way. They could only talk about things they directly saw or felt. This is called “non-thematic speech.” Aboriginally, proto-humans were only able to experience consciously during acts of vocal communication. At first, only seeing and hearing bore a conscious quality. However, this immediate assertiveness became available to other sense modalities like, for example, touching, smelling, etc.
This simple non-thematic speech led to a basic awareness of themselves and the world. They realized things were real and that their actions had intended effects.
Over time, they developed a more complex way of speaking. This “thematic speech” allowed them to talk about ideas, make plans, and tell stories.
This complex speech led people to evolve a deeper understanding of themselves and the world. They could now interpret their experiences and define themselves in relation to the world.
Thematic speech organizes information intricately by relating a thesis to a theme in accordance with implicitly preconceived categories. This allows for a higher level of assertiveness. Thematic speech allows humans to plan for the future, learn from the past, evaluate alternative realities, and construct abstract worlds removed from concreteness, individuality, and time, ultimately enabling them to manage their relationship with “reality as world”.
Dewart argues that thematic speech emerged as a result of the mutual involution of experience and communication. As non-thematic speech rendered the speaker’s experience increasingly self-present, the speaker became conscious of their own speech, particularly its communicative function. This awareness allowed them to thematize their experience of reality. Further intensification of self-presence led to heightened awareness of the assertive function of speech, enabling the speaker to convert an experienced reality into a thesis. This process, driven by self-selection rather than natural selection, culminated in the emergence of thematic speech.
The Need to Make Sense of Ourselves
Humans have a deep need to understand themselves and their place in the world. This need drives much of our behavior.
We are not born with a sense of self. We have to create it through our experiences and interactions with others.
This need to define ourselves explains why we value meaning and purpose. We need our lives to make sense.
How Culture Shapes Our Self-Definition
The way we speak and think is shaped by the culture we grow up in. Our culture teaches us how to understand the world and ourselves.
This cultural influence is often unconscious. We don’t realize that our basic assumptions about reality are shaped by our culture.
This explains why different cultures have different ways of seeing the world. Our language and thought patterns shape our understanding of reality.
Thematic speech, with its ability to organize information categorically, provides the means for consciousness to define itself. By relating theses and themes in categorical patterns, the speaker can interpret both the world and himself in relation to his own conscious experience. This interpretative capacity, enabled by thematic speech, allows consciousness to move beyond merely experiencing the world, to understanding it, and in turn to understanding itself. Thus, thematic speech facilitates the emergence of self-defining consciousness.
Thematic speech enables humans to make assertions about themselves and each other, leading to the development of cultural institutions that define and regulate human life. These institutions transmit self and world understanding to new generations through both explicit and implicit assertions. While secondary and tertiary institutions, such as economic, political, and religious systems, perpetuate specific narratives and interpretations, the primary institution of self-definition is thematic speech itself. The form of thematic speech, with its implicit categorical concepts, creates non-conscious presuppositions about reality and causality that constrain the individual’s self-definition within the limits of his culture’s fundamental assumptions.
The Evolution of Self-Awareness
The development of self-defining consciousness was a major step in the evolution of life. It allowed humans to become self-aware and self-directed.
Self-awareness gave us the ability to make choices and shape our own destiny. We are not simply driven by instinct like other animals.
However, this freedom also comes with responsibility. We are quintessentially responsible for our experience and have to learn to use this freedom wisely and create a meaningful life for ourselves.
Unlike inanimate objects or infrahuman organisms, consciousness comes into being without an identity. This lack of inherent identity creates a vital need for human beings to construct their own meaningful self-definition. This need for self-identity becomes the primary human motive, supersedes and at times surpasses the drive for self-preservation found in other organisms. While humans still possess the instinct for survival, it becomes subordinate to the need for experiencing their identity as meaningful. This need for self-definition explains why some humans deliberately choose to end their lives, even for seemingly irrational reasons.
The emergence of self-defining consciousness marks a crucial step in the evolution of life’s self-orientation. While all life exhibits purposive efficient causality aimed at self-preservation, consciousness transforms this purposiveness into deliberate self-direction, or will. Thematic speech and self-definition further enhance this self-direction by providing the capacity for self-governance and freedom. This integration of efficacy and finality allows human beings to manage their own self-preservation consciously to create their own identity, adding the possibility of making them truly free selves.
Want to print your doc?
This is not the way.
This is not the way.
Try clicking the ··· in the right corner or using a keyboard shortcut (
CtrlP
) instead.