The Unreflected is Not Nothing

It’s hard to understand how traditional philosophical thinkers like Descartes prioritized self reflective thought as the basis of consciousness. Clearly they never experienced the absolute horror of being ejected from one’s own body through an event of depersonalization. In the end, we are not thinking creatures, we are being creatures.

Sometimes we look into mirrors to confirm our existence. We are legitimized through the reflection and it is consoling. What is actually being reflected back at us goes way beyond the image and precedes any type of analytical thought. When depersonalized, confronting the mirror only confirms the nightmare: your body is a flesh casing; an object, emptied of its lived unity, and the ego— cast into a substrate of nothingness. Merleau-Ponty might describe this moment as the breakdown of the pre-reflective, embodied link between being and the world. I find it amazing that this self shattering is even possible. It’s hard to imagine until you experience it firsthand.

So the learning lesson for me here was: that the body AND the ego serve as perceptive anchors. It is not the body alone. Perception is at the mercy of the body, the body at the mercy of the ego, and the ego at the mercy of life itself.