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‘I thou’
Saturday, 3 May 2025 at 02:24
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
‘I thou’
In Essay on Faith,Coleridge presented an examination of the ‘I thou’ relationship that was an advance on the Fichtean concept of summoning, and more sophisticated than anything Martin Buber would later offer.
This is a deep meditation, though the position is capable of the strictest proof—namely, that there can be no I without a Thou, and that a Thou is only possible by an equation in which I is taken as equal to Thou, and yet not the same... but the equation of Thou with I, by means of a free act, negativing the sameness in order to establish the equality, is the definition of conscience.
Conscience has the same etymological root as consciousness, but with the added element of an inner morality. Conscience stands in contrast to elicited emotion or thought due to associations based on immediate sensory perceptions and reflexive responses. One could have consciousness of responding to sensory stimuli, but the conscience trumps both consciousness and sense perception, knowing that the actions resulting from these two latter can be judged to be right or wrong.
From Child of Encounter
© John Dunn.
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