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Home SitemapHome Mahmoud Khatami: A Primer of His Ontetic Philosophy of Human SubjectivityWritten By: Sophia TaylorPhilosophy and Religious Studies at Lincoln UniversityPrepared as ebook by: Jeffery McBrown2012Paperback:200 pagesPublisher:VDM Verlag Dr. Mller (June 16, 2010)Language:EnglishISBN-10:3639222814ISBN-13:978-3639222814Book DescriptionHuman subjectivity is one of central themes in modern philosophy, and great minds of Modern Philosophy like Kant, Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger, to name a few, devoted their philosophical career to verify aspects of that issue which is still focal in current debates. The present book is written, however, to follow up and introduce that issue in the works of the Persian philosopher Mahmoud Khatami. Khatami has developed a speculative system of thought which is called ontetic philosophy and taken human subjectivity as its major theme. This book undertakes to describe aspects of khatami's analysis of human subjectivity including such themes as consciousness, action, imagination, emotion, conscience, morality, body-mind relation and the transcendence of human subjectivity. This book, therefore, provides a fresh introduction to an interesting approach to human subjectivity and helps shed some light on the issue; it should be especially useful to professionals in philosophy as well as psychology,anthropology and religious studies.

Table of ContentsIntroduction / 1Chapter One:Consciousness and Action / 9Chapter Two:Action and the Essence of Human Subjectivity / 43Chapter Three:The Unitarity of Human Subjectivity/ 71Chapter Four:Transcendent Psychology/ 113Chapter Five:Imagination / 121Chapter Six:Emotion / 145Chapter Seven:Becoming Transcendent / 155Bibilography / 183

IntroductionPersian philosophy has had a long history and huge story since Magi wisdom which impacted the early history of philosophy in Middel East as well as early Greek philosophy, up to Islamic period of Persian thought which presented such masters as Avicenna, Ghazali, Suhravardi andMulla Sadra, up to the present period of Persian philosophy which still survives with a living spirit of its heritage within modern world.1 This book is, however, devoted to one of our contemporary Persian philosophers who has embodied such spirit in his works: Mahmoud Khatami.Mahmoud Khatami is an innovative mind. He has undertaken to build up a system of philosophy of his own. He has profoundly developed a hilosophy named ontetic philosophy which is rooted in Persian-Islamic tradition.2 The basic theme of ontetic philosophy is humansubjectivity, and its fundamental question is to ask the critical condition of humanity. Human subjectivity is one of central themes in modern hilosophy, and great minds of Modern Philosophy like Kant, Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger, to name a few, devoted their philosophical career to verify aspects of that issue which is focal for modernity. Khatami has elaborated his ontetic philosophy to answers this question in turn, and meet that critical condition. Very shortly, the core of Khatamis solution is to take up the problematic of humansubjectivity again and to analyse it in the context of illuminative being. This helps to rediscover the ontetic constitution of human subjectivity and his transcendent roots whichare, as he believes, forgotten in modern condition.1 For a short study see: Seyyed Hossein Nasr,"Islamic Philosophy from Its Origin to the Present: Philosophy inthe Land of Prophecy", SUNY Press, 2006, Chapters 10-13; for an anthology see: Nasr S.H., els eds., anAnthology of Philosophy in Persian, B. Tauris 2008.2 For the meaning of ontetic philosophy, see below in this introduction: A Sketch of Khatamis Ontetic Philosophy.2The present essay is written in terms of this fundamental problem that grows in Khatamis thought as his thought grows: human subjectivity. It tries to introduce aspects of this issue with a concentration on his analysis. The book undertakes a slow takeoff and a fairy rapid rate ofclimb for more complex penetrations of his analysis to provide some description and depth of detail. It is not Khatmis whole system that this book has been written to promote, however.Rather, Khatamis analysis of human subjectivity is centralized here, and other issues (e.g., his theory of values, and moral philosophy) will be referred to so far as concerned this issue. Eachchapter is singled out to abridge major themes in Khatamis philosophy of human subjectivity;at the biginning of each chapter, the relvant references are mentioned in prior.For the being time, however, I would brief the reader in the rest of this introduction with a shortbiography of Mahmoud Khatami, and some general notes concerning his system of philosophyto prepare the reader for the following chapters which will only be devoted to his analysis ofhuman subjectivity.A Sketch of LifeMahmoud Khatami was born on January 4, 1963, in the historical city of Ray, south Tehran,Iran. He grew up in a well-known and educated family.3 Showing an early interest in physics;he started to study this subject and teach it in high school immediately after his secondrygraduation. Concurrently, he attended the Seminary of Islamic studies, including Islamicphilosophy, which gained him later the traditional degree of Ijtihad. However, it was his studyof physics that led him to philosophical debates on such physical theories as Relativity andQuantum theory; he gave up physics and attended the University of Tehran to pursue hiseducation in philosophy.Early years of bachelor program spent with the same interest in philosophy of physics, plus aninclination to study analytical philosophy; but in fourth year of his education he discovered3 For his biography see: Dictionary of International Biography, published by British International BiographicalCentre, Cambridge 2006. Also see: Miller F.P, Vandome A.F., McBrewster eds., Mahmoud Khatami,Alphascript Publishing, 20093phenomenology. Phenomenology occupied Khatamis succeeding years of studying ofphilosophy; he won University of Tehrans scholarships for M.A and Phd and devoted himselfto study phenomenological movement and three great Hs of the movement: Hegel, Husserland Heidegger. He wrote his Master dissertation on a priori which was in fact an ontologicalinterpretation of Husserls theory of a priori. By that time, he achieved a Master degree in thefield of religious studies and wrote a dissertation on the Unity of Being in Hindu thoughtwhich was an ontological interpretation of Sankaras pantheism. Khatamis inclination toontology which was designated by his references to Islamic philosophy made him ready towelcome Heideggers project of Fundamental Ontology; a project to which Khatami devotedhis Phd thesis in the University of Tehran. This time Khatami was awarded a full scholarship tocontinue his education in philosophy in England where he held his second PhD degree in thefiels of consciousness and theories of the self- a field followed by a post-doctoral research oncognition and subjectivity.Years of living and studying in England were an opportunity for Khatami to touch westerncultures skin and focus on its philosophical flesh. Well educated in traditional Persian-Islamicphilosophy, there seemed to be a clear need for him to examine his heritage to see if it can helptreatment of the contemporary philosophical malaise. It was the time for him to build up hisphilosophy of a sort different from others. He undertook hard labor towards that goal. Plenty ofhis works published later received their early draft during that period, including his two worksSadraean Meditations (published later in 2003) and From a Sadraean Point of View: AnOntetic Elimination of the Subjective Self (published later in 2004).Returning to Iran in 1996, Khatami was immediately appointed to the University of Tehransphilosophy faculty where he becomes a full professor and held chair of contemporaryphilosophy and metaphysics. In 2002, he was also appointed as Fellow to the Iranian Academyof the Arts.4 In 2000, Khatami was asked to publish something to upgrade his academic4 In the meantime, Khatami has received visiting professorships in distinguished universities in England, USAand Canada. He has also received awards and prizes inside Iran and abroad.4position in the university, and he did; this was a starting point for a decade of publication of hisworks which were partly written in 1990s. This includes nearly one hundred works; however,this number will probably increase as his thought is growing and productive, and he is youngenough to write. His recently published works on religion, ethics and aesthetics show otheraspects of his thought; and one may wait for future to see what he may bring forth and whatdevelopment or change may happen to his thought.A Sketch of Khatamis Ontetic PhilosophyKhatamis principal problem is the critical condition of human subjectivity in modern time; acondition which he has formulated as rooted in an ontological gap after Descartes up tocontemporary Western philosophy.5. He claims that this condition concerns the greatphilosophers (specifically two top philosophers: Hegel and Heidegger) of modern time to find asolution for the problem. However, Khatami tries to suggest an otherwise solution. Relying onhis heritage, then, he articulates ontetic philosophy to solve that problem.Ontetic philosophy is a speculative systematic philosophy. The word ontetic is not an Englishword;6 Khatami has coined this word to express his thought most exactly; he did not take it in asense of ontologic nor of ontic (and by that, he wishes to differ his discussion fromHeideggers).7 For Khatami, ontetic means something more. Ontetic has three constituentswhich must be considered althgeter as the meaning that this word indicates. Relying on theancient Persian philosophy, Khatami takes light (rushanayi) interpreted as consciousness(agahi) which embraces being;8 From other hand, light is Tashkiki, that is, of a continuoushierarchic constitution which can spread both vertically and horizentally, and this is the idea5 Cf. From a Sadraean Point of View: Towards an Elimination of the Subjectivistic self, London Academy ofIranian Studies, London 2004 (hereafter: FSPV), Ch. 1: Introducing the Problem.6 See FSPV, Ch.2, n.11.7 For his discussion on Hedeggers ontological-ontic distiction see: Heidegger's Notion of the World,Moasseseh Andisheh Islami, Tehran 2001. (2ed edition 2005); also see is note in FSPV, ch.2.8 This idea is deeply explained in his forthcoming book: Being and Light; for an othewise discussion see his AnIntroduction to Iranian Philosophy of Art, Tehran: Iran's Academy of the Arts' Press (2010); also in this relationsee: "A Phenomenological Approach to the Illuminative Notion of Man," in Microcosm and Macrocosm,ed. ByA. M. Tymanicca, Spinger, 2006.5that is revived by Persian philosopher, Suhravardi the Master of Illumination and theoreticallyaccomplished by Mulla Sadra the founder of Persian Transcendent philosophy. Khatami usesthe word ontetic to indicate these three elements when are taken together. Ontetic philosophyis then a philosophy which is based on this idea.Moreover, ontetic philosophy goes systematic. This philosophy requires its special method andlogic, and Khatami has reconstructed the transcendent method and developed an onteticlogic.9 To set up the transcendent method, first, Khatami starts from every day experience andreconstructs a method to transcend from this experience by reducing it to its original sourcestep- by- step. This method leads to three continuous levels of human consciousness each ofwhich follow its relevant level of logic. Let us discribe the pillars of this method and its logicvery shortly.The transcendent method starts with an ideal for a beginningless commence.10 This phrasesounds a Husserlian phenomenological epoche. No doubt, Khatami has considered Husserlianphenomenological method in elaborating his transcendent method; but he has intensivelyinserted Persian illuminative elements here. First of all, he pursues this beginninglesscommence in the stage of Tubah (meaning: return) in the illuminative practical doctrine of Sayrva Soluk (literarily meaning: journey and conduct) and builds up his integral logic. Khatamismethod and logic is constituted from vertical as well as horizontal aspects of consciouness andbeing in a heirerchic but continuous constitution. According to Khatami, There are twointerrelated kinds of sayr va soluk in general: Afaqi which belongs to the horizon of Being, andAnfusi which is vertically directed toward the purest point (or the source) of Being. These twokinds of sayr va soluk are realised for a Truth-seeker (talib al haqq) in four stages of anexistential experience which indicates four ek-stasis of the self to achieve the presentialcognition.9 See: FSPV, ch.one; also: "The Transcendent method: A Reconstruction", in Comparative Studies on MullaSadra, V.4, ed.SIPIN, Mulla Sadra Foundation, Tehran 200210 Ibid.6Khatami summaries these stages by using Husserlian term of Reduction again; However, hestill employs this word in his specific indication: Each stage [of four stages] implies areduction: (a) Reduction from appearances (dawaher) to their essences (mahyyat); (b)Reduction from essences to the knowing self (nafs al 'aref); (c) Reduction from the knowingself to the self as presential cognition (al nafs ayn o ma'refateh); (d) Reduction of thepresential cognition to Being which implies a new return to the things (the phenomenal world)through Being itself, with a different outlook; considering neither their appearance (asphenomenalism says) nor their essence (as phenomenology says); rather, their reality as theemanative entities.Khatami tells us that the reductions (a) and (b) belong to the horizontal lines in theconstitution of Being, and we can classify them as the eidtic reduction (in Husserlian sense)because they belong to essences and the eidetic field. While the reductions (c) and (d),Khatami writes, belong to the vertical line in the constitution of Being and we can classifythem as the ontetic reduction.11According to the above levels and reduction we see three level of logic which are onlylevels of a continuously vertical-horizontal, heirarchic and integrated logic. The general namehe uses for this logic is ontetic logic which accords the transcendental method. First level ofthis logic which happens with application of the biginningless commence, is called empiricallogic. Empirical logic is the logic of induction and experiential conclusions. The second levelhappens with the eidetic reduction, in which we are reflectively seeking the essences and theirinterrelations as they appear in our reflective constituting consciousness. Eidtic logic coversformal logic in its all presentation, being classic or modern, being deductive or abductive. Thethird level which is disclosed by the ontetic reduction, in which there is no reflection but a purepresence; it is logic of prsence which not formal in its nature. According to Khatami, theempirical logic as well as the formal logic are limited to lower regions of human consciouness11 Ibid. This eidetic-ontetic distinction is also based on katamis special understanding of Mulla Sadrasessence-existence distinction.7and being, and have their special field of application. They are parts of the transcendent methodand two primary constituents of the ontetic logic. However, the ontetic logic is Logic ofTashkik, that is, a continuous, qualitative, and hierarchic logic with the ability of descendingand ascending in vertical, as well as running and returning in horizontal constitution, whetherin a linear way or circular etc.12This logic and its transcendent method enables Khatami to start by description of the plaincommomsensual experience which every body has from him and his environment; then goesfurther and reduces it to the eidetic entities which constitute various subjects of sciences; thenhe reduces consciousness to its original source which is presential cognition (and not atranscendental Ego as we see in Kantian-Husserlian heritage). It is from this point that Khatamiextends his philosophy of subjectivity and other issues concerning human subjectivity.Meanwhile, by the ontetic reduction he recovered the ancient Persian philosophical triadic ideaof Consciousness-Action-Being and tried to conclude the ontetic logic hidden in this idea.This idea, though constituted the whole constitution of reality, shapes the world of humansubjectivity which is a qualitative world (macrocosm) in itself.13 This means for Khatami thathuman subjectivity accords the world; the ontetic realm would be a human extroversion, that is,the human triad of presence: Consciousness-Action-Being. This approach brings Khatami tocentralize human subjectivity as the main thematic subject of philosophy: Philosophy is theonly science that purely devoted to human subjectivity and its relationships (which build up hisworld).14 According to this thesis, every thing we consider as a being means for us asappeared in human world and its network of ontetic relations.While it is interesting and disputational enough to start with Khatamis latter thesis, thefollowing chapters will however illustray the constituents of human subjectivity, so far as histriadic idea of Consciousness-Action-Being is concerned.12 Ibid.13 See: "A Phenomenological Approach to the Illuminative Notion of Man," in Microcosm and Macrocosm,ed.By A. M. Tymanicca, Spinger, 200614 See: Lectures on Contemporary Western Philosophy, Tehran: Elm Publisher, 2008, Introduction.9

Chapter OneConsciousness and ActionKhatami has approached aspects of human subjectivity systematically from the onteticreduction as the resume of the transcendent method.15 In most part of his philosophy, Khatamibegins with this common sense that every body has a continuously current experience ofhimself which is the richest and apparently the most complex of all experiences accessible tohim so that the experience of anything outside of himself is always associated with this currentexperience of himself, and it never experiences anything external without having at the sametime such an experience of himself. Following Suhravardi, Khatami calls this experiencepresential cognition (lm huzuri).16 Presential cognition is already an experience of having ahuman subjectivity by which human being comes into a cognitive relation with itself. 17 Theexperiential nature of this relation is, in a sense, continuous; but it is also renewed each time therelation is disrupted and then re-established. For the experience of the relation is notuninterrupted even when it refers to the self. Human subjectivity always remains in this15 My discussion here is based on: Sadraean Meditations: Toward a Transcendent Philosophy of Mind, Lekton2003 (hereafter: SM), ch.one; Also FSPV, chapters 1- 3; for the relationship of consciousness and action see alsoHuman Subjectivity: Consciousness and Action in Journal of Shii Islamic Studies, Fall 2008.16 For his discussion on consciousness see: SM, ch.one; FSPV, ch. 2,3; Transcendental Subjectivity and Beyond,Academic Press 2006 (hereafter: TSB), ch.3; An Introduction to Philosophy of Mind, University of Tehran Press,Tehran 2003 (hereafter: IPM),ch.2; Mind, Consciousness, Self, Tehran: Elm Publisher, 2008 (hereafter: MCS),ch.2, SI, ch. 3. Psychosomatology, Academy Press, 2007 (hereafter: PS), pp118-132. Also see FSPV, Ch. 3; alsosee the relevant articles on the presential cognition in bibliography.17 See: SM, p.21ff; for aspects of his discussion on subjectivity see: TSB; FSPV; MCS, SI, also the followingarticles: A Phenomenological Approach to the Illuminative Notion of Man," in Microcosm and Macrocosm,ed.By A. M. Tymanicca, Spinger, 2006; Kant's Idea of the Apriori: Toward an Interpretation, Wisdom andPhilosophy, spiring 2005 ; "Husserl's Critique of Kant's Formal Approach to the Apriori" in Dard-e Falsafa,gam-e-no, Tehran 2005; Reflection On Apriori, in Current trends in western Philosophy, V.1, Institute forHumanities and Cultural Studies Tehran (2006), Foucault on the Subject in Current trends in westernPhilosophy, V.4, Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies Tehran 2007; The Transcendental Knowledgeand the Psychological Subjectivity, Philosophia, winter 2004; Kant and Husserl on the transcendental,Existentia, Fall 2002; Sadraean Notion of Consciousness, Transcendent Philosophy, summer 2000; On theTranscendental Element of Life, in the Journal of Shi'i Islamic Philosophy, 2, II, spring 2009.10continuing presential experience.The contemporary philosophy seems to overlook the essentialsimplicity and unity of this presential experience and attributes the unitary nature of experienceto its allegedly being composed of a set of sensations or emotions. Undoubtedly everyexperience is a single event, and its every occurrence is unique and unrepeatable, but even sothere is something that may be called the experience of human subjectivity. The object ofexperience is human subjectivity emerging from all the moments and at the same time presentin every one of them. Moreover, this presential lasts as long as there is maintained thatcognitive relation (lm) in which I am both the subject (alim) and the object (mloum). It isworth noting that the transcendent philosophy does not interpret experience here in the purelyphenomenalistic sense, as has often been the practice in the broad sphere of empiricist thinking.On the contrary, the empirical approach adopted by Khatami must not, and indeed cannot, beidentified in any way with the phenomenalistic conception of experience. To reduce the rangeof experience to the functions and the content of sense alone would lead to deep contradictionsand serious misunderstandings. This may be vividly illustrated by considering the object ofcognition. For once the phenomenalistic stand is adopted it becomes necessary to ask, whatthen is given directly in experience? Is it only some surface aspect of the being calledhuman subjectivity, an aspect detectable by sense, or is it human subjectivity itself? Is it myown ego and if so, to what extent is it given? It does not seem reasonable to believe that we aregiven only some more or less undefined set of qualities in, or rather of, human subjectivity, butnot human subjectivity itself. Moreover, it seems most improbable that human subjectivity withits action is not given as the object of experience. Action is a particular moment in theexperience of human subjectivity. Within the frame of this expression, the question of theappropriate relation of human subjectivity and action which becomes manifest in experience,appears. Action is not a single event but a process. An action presupposes and reveals humansubjectivity. Khatami looks at human subjectivity through its action. For it lies in the nature ofthe correlation inherent in experience, in the very nature of human acting, that actionconstitutes the specific moment whereby human subjectivity is revealed. Action gives us the11best insight into the inherent essence of human subjectivity and allows us to understand humansubjectivity most fully. Through the presential cognition, I experience my subjectivity, and amconvinced of it because it performs actions. This of course bears a specified interpretation ofaction which Khatami may draw from the philosophy of Sadra. This interpretation issues fromthe Sadraean notion of Being, and more directly from the conception of potentia-actus, whichhas been used by Sadra to explain the substantial kinetic change (harakat joharriyyah) andsimultaneously kinetic nature of being.Khatami considers in detail the reality of human subjectivity and its being present whichindicates its proper mode of acting. The presential experience is the concretion of the kinesisproper to human being, insofar as its performance is conformable with the free will. In the lightof the Sadraean conception as interpreted by Khatami, the peculiar aspect of the term presentialexperience is its close link with a corresponding potentiality. This points to the potentialsubstratum of actualization; it explains why the presential experience considers human being asthe subject who acts, less directly, it accounts for its potentiality as the source of acting. Thesame is accomplished with still greater precision by the expression the voluntary act whichpoints directly to the power that serves as the kinetic basis in conscious acting, the basis of theexperience. This power is the free will. The attribute voluntary also tells us how the experienceis accomplished, namely, that it is voluntary which means there is nothing to interfere withthe actualization of the free will. Moreover, the expressions the presential cognition orexperience as such contains a definite interpretation of action as cognitive acting, which isstrictly connected with the philosophy of being. It accounts for the experiential facts as a wholeand brings out most meaningfully all that is essential in them. In a sense we may even say noother interpretation of the presential experience is possible; for it seems there is no conceptionbetter suited for grasping both the thoroughly kinetic nature of the experiences and theirintimate association with human being. It seems, moreover, that any attempt at dealing withthis problem, any attempt that strives to attain the full meaning of all its essential elements andconstitutive interrelations, must in one way or another acknowledge the philosophical content12hidden in the terms the presential experience and cognitive act. This conception tends toassume human subjectivity as the source of action; meanwhile, action may also serve as asource of the experience of human subjectivity. Action as such- that is, as the experience- oughtto be helpful in the cognitive actualization of the potentiality, which it takes for granted as itsroots. But the potentiality is that of the individual being, so that action is to be interpreted notonly as the presential experience but also as action of human subjectivity. In approachinghuman subjectivity through its actions the transcendent philosophy retain that philosophicalintuition which appears to be indispensable for the comprehension and the philosophicalinterpretation of any kinesis and thus also of the kinesis of action, that is, of the experience;and, then, the fullest and most comprehensive interpretation of that kinesis is the only way ofbringing into view the whole reality of human subjectivity.In this sense, action is identical inmeaning with the presential experience; the noun action is related to the verbs to act and to do.Action, as used here, is equivalent to the acting of a human subjectivity. While thepresential experience shows such action as a specific manner of becoming based on thepotentiality of human subjectivity, the terms act or action themselves tell us nothing about it.They seem to denote the same kinetic reality but, in a way, only as a phenomenon ormanifestation rather than as an ontetic constitution. It does not mean, however, that theyprevent us from gaining access to this constitution. On the contrary, both action and thepresential experience tell us of the kinesis proper to human subjectivity. By action is,therefore, meant consciouss acting. This expression implicitly refers to the kind of acting thatis related to and characteristic of the will. Thus the phrase to some extent corresponds to thevoluntary act in Sadraean philosophy, since any acting pertaining to the will must also beconscious. We can now see even more vividly how condensed is the meaning of action or ofthe corresponding conscious acting of everyday speech. It has the ontetic implications, whichbelong to the presential experience, as well as the epistemological implications, which aretraceable in such attributives as the voluntary or the conscious or the cognitive. Hence thenotion of action contains a great wealth of implications, which will have to be gradually13extricated and explicated. Simultaneously Khatamis explication will gradually disclose thatreality of human subjectivity; keeping in it the unitarity of the concrete action. This gradualapproach is, indeed, the direct consequence of the very conception of an aspect; an aspectmay never stand for the whole and may never put it out of view. If it is substituted for a whole,it ceases to be but an aspect, and unavoidably leads to errors in the conception we form of anycomposite reality. But it is precisely such a complex reality that, Khatami claims, we have inthe subject who acts. One cannot for a moment forget the existence of this complexity and theensuing epistemological principles when we embark upon the analysis of human subjectivityand its action by examining first, the aspect of consciousness and second, that of efficiency.ConsciousnessAs we saw the presential experience implies action by which conscious acting is meant. Theconcept of conscious acting, in its turn, brings us to envisage consciousness in the experienceand action but does not precisely identify them. It is first necessary to recognize the differencebetween conscious acting and the consciousness of acting; the aspect of consciousness will thencome into view, as it were, in itself. The distinction, when we make it, allows us to gain a directaccess to consciousness, thus enabling us to examine it in greater detail-though obviously wemust continue to take account of the function which it performs in the acting as well as in thewhole existence of human subjectivity. For human subjectivity not only acts consciously, butalso has the consciousness that it is acting and even that it is acting consciously. This isapparent in the fact that conscious and consciousness have two different applications: oneis used attributively, when reference is made to conscious acting; the other is employed as anoun, which may be the subject, when the reference is to the consciousness of acting.Khatamis discussion will henceforth concentrate on the consciousness of acting and consequentlyon the consciousness of the subject who acts; hence Khatamis aim will be todisclose its relationship with human subjectivity and action. It is only in this connection thatconsciousness as such will be considered. When, on the other hand, Khatami speaks ofconscious acting- without stressing the consciousness of acting- then he points only to action,14to its constitutive feature that proceeds from cognition. What is implied here is the kind ofcognition that makes action also voluntary, which means that it is performed according to thewill; for cognitive objectivation is assumed in the correct functioning of the will. It nowbecomes clear why the expression conscious acting says nothing directly of theconsciousness of acting. It is, however, possible and even necessary to discern, in that kineticwhole, consciousness as such, and to examine it as a special aspect. Khatami concerns withconscious acting, and thinks that an examination of the consciousness of acting may throw newlight on the whole kinetic system of human subjectivity.Meanwhile, the traditional interpretation of action as conscious acting implies consciousness.In this sense, consciousness is, as Khatami argues, completely merged in the kinesis of the will.This interpretation neither isolates nor develops the aspect of consciousness. But consciousnessas such, consciousness in the substantival and subjective sense, because it permeates deep intothe whole human subjectivity, action relation and because in itself it is an important aspect ofthis relation, may be perceived by itself in conscious acting. It is this aspect that not onlyreflects the existence of human subjectivity as well as its actions, but also fashions them in aspecific manner. Let us note, however, that although in the traditional conception of consciousacting, this aspect was not entirely disregarded, its presentation was vague, and, as it were,only implied.The traditional conception of conscious acting was in fact a tributary, not only of anepistemologically realistic position, but also of a metaphysical standpoint. It conceivedconsciousness as something that was incorporated and subordinate, as if it was dissolved inhuman actions and in its being, the being of the rational nature; though human subjectivityexisted and acted consciously, it was not in consciousness that its being and acting had theirspecific origin. In this connection Khatamis position here seems to be against any tendency toattribute absolute significance to consciousness. Khatami wants, however, to bring out and, soto speak, to expose the fact that consciousness constitutes a specific and unique aspect in theexperience. Whereas in the Khatamis approach, the aspect of consciousness was on the one15hand only implied and, as it were, hidden in rationality or discourse on the other hand itwas contained in the will. The task set out in this investigation is to go further and to exhibitconsciousness as an intrinsic and constitutive aspect of the constitution of human subjectivity.Indeed, human subjectivity not only acts consciously, but it is also aware of both the fact that itis acting and the fact that it is it who is acting- hence it has the awareness of action as well as ofhuman subjectivity in their kinetic interrelation, its awareness is simultaneous with consciousacting and, so to speak, accompanies it. But it is also present before and after. It has its owncontinuity and its own identity separates from the continuity and the identity of any particularaction. Consciousness accompanies and reflects action when it is born and performed; onceaction is accomplished, consciousness still continues to reflect it, though of course it no longeraccompanies it. The accompanying presence of consciousness is decisive in making humansubjectivity aware of its acting rather than in making its acting conscious. Again, it is itspresence that makes it act as human subjectivity and experience its acting as an action, the roleof the aspect of consciousness being manifested most appropriately in the latter. This isprecisely what Khatami shall now strive to expound.Though in the ultimate analysis the function of consciousness is cognitive, however in thisfunction consciousness seems to be only a reflecting of what happens in human subjectivityand of its acting, of what it does and how it does it. Consciousness is also the reflecting ofeverything that human subjectivity meets with in an external relation by means of any and allof its doings - also cognitive - and all the things happening in it . This is all reflected inconsciousness. Contained in it, so to speak, there is the whole human subjectivity, as well asthe whole world accessible to this concrete human subjectivity who is me. How is all thiscontained in consciousness? Whatever consciousness contains is held in a specific mannerthat lies in the essence of cognitive acts performed by human subjectivity to investigate a thing,to objectivize it intentionally, and in this way to comprehend it. In this sense cognitive actshave an intentional character, since they are directed toward the cognitive object. The samedoes not seem to apply to consciousness. The cognitive reason for the existence of16consciousness and of the acts proper to it does not consist in the penetrative apprehension ofthe constitutive elements of the object, in its objectivation leading to the constitution of theobject.18 Thence the intentionality that is characteristic for cognitive acts- to which we owe theformation and the understanding of the objective reality- does not seem to be derived from actsof consciousness. These are not essentially intentional by nature, even though all that is theobject of our cognition, comprehension, and knowledge is also the object of our consciousness.But while comprehension and knowledge contribute in an intentional way to the formation ofthe object- it is in this that consists the inherent kinesis of cognizing- consciousness as such isrestricted to reflecting what has already been cognized. Consciousness is aware of what hasbeen constituted and comprehended.The purport of the preceding remarks is that the intrinsic cognitive kinesis, the very operationof cognition, does not belong to consciousness. If acts of cognition consist in constituting in aspecific way the meanings referring to cognitive objects, then it is not consciousness thatconstitutes them, even if they are indubitably constituted also in consciousness. It seems,therefore, impossible to deny the cognitive properties or even the cognitive function ofconsciousness, though the nature of the properties and the function is specific. What Khatamimay perhaps call the consciousness trait is peculiar to the particular acts of consciousness aswell as to their current totality, which may be viewed as the sum or the resultant of those actsand which Khatami usually refers to as consciousness. As consciousness Khatamiunderstands then reflecting consciousness- that is, consciousness in its reflecting function. IfKhatami considers it as if it were the derivative of the whole actively cognitive process and ofthe cognitive attitude to the external reality, like the last reflection of the process in thecognizant subject, it means that Khatami recognizes this reflecting or reflecting as possibleinsofar as he attributes to consciousness the specific quality of penetrating and illuminatingwhatever becomes in any way human cognitive possession, though such penetrativeillumination is not tantamount to the active understanding of objects and, subsequently, to the18 See; SM ch. One; For his discussion on constitution see: TSB, chs 1-2.17constituting of their meanings. The penetrative illumination Khatami keeps here, is rather likekeeping objects and their cognitive meanings in the light, or in the actual field ofconsciousness.The above remarks push us to look at consciousness from a different angle, even though theaim of Khatamis present discussion is not to elaborate a complete theory of consciousness. Todeny the intentional nature of the acts of consciousness seems to be contrary to mostcontemporary opinions on that issue. Looking at consciousness, however, Khatami considers itnot as a separate and self-contained reality but as the subjective content of the being and actingthat is conscious, the being and acting proper to human subjectivity. Disclosing consciousnessin the totality of kinesiss and showing it as the constitutive property of action Khatami strivesto understand it, but always in its relation to action, to the kinetic and constitution of humansubjectivity. This interpretation of consciousness protects us from conceiving it as anindependent, self-contained subject. Indeed, to recognize that consciousness is an independentsubject could pave the way to a conception of it in absolute terms and consequently would leadto idealism, if it were taken as the sole subject of all the contents - which would then be nothingbut an expression of its own doing. This line of reasoning, however, lies beyond the scope ofthe present considerations that concern solely with the experience of consciousness. It isnecessary nevertheless to note that the sum or resultant of the acts of consciousness realizes theactual state of consciousness. The subject of this state, however, is not consciousness itself buthuman subjectivity, about which Khatami says that it is or is not conscious, that it has full orlimited consciousness, and so on. Consciousness itself does not exist as the substantivesubject of the acts of consciousness; it exists neither as an independent factor nor as a faculty.As already pointed out, consciousness is entirely dissolved in its own acts and in their specificcharacter of being aware; and though this specific character is connected with the reflectingfunction, it is a different thing from cognitive objectivation. Indeed, it is not only thatcognitively through its experience, human subjectivity enters into the world of other men andobjects and even discovers itself there as one of them: it has also as its possession all this world18in the image reflected by consciousness, which is a factor in its experience which is theinnermost life. For consciousness not only reflects but also interiorizes in its own specificmanner what it reflects, thus encapsulating or capturing it in human subjectivity. This exploresa deeper function of consciousness, which implies that consciousness reflects actions in its ownpeculiar manner- the reflection intrinsically belongs to it- but does not cognitively objectivizeeither them or the agent who performs them, or even the whole world of human subjectivity,which in one way or another is connected with human subjectivity and acting. Nevertheless, theacts of consciousness as well as their resultant are obviously related to everything that liesbeyond them, and especially to actions performed by the subject. This relation is established bymeans of the consciousness, which is constituted by the meanings of the particular items ofreality and of their interrelationships. When Khatami speaks of the aspect of consciousness thatrefers to meanings, and at the same time states that consciousness as such has no power ofcognitive objectivation, he comes to the conclusion that the whole of cognition- the power andthe efficiency of active comprehension- closely cooperates with consciousness. Consciousnessitself is thus conditioned by this power and efficiency- it is conditioned by the cognitivepotentiality, which appears as a fundamental property of human subjectivity. The power andthe efficiency of active understanding allow us to ascertain the meaning of particular things andto intellectually incorporate them, as well as the relations between them, into ourconsciousness. For, to understand means the same as to grasp the meaning of things andtheir interrelations. Insofar as all this is alien to consciousness the whole process of activecomprehending neither proceeds in it nor is owing to it. The meanings of things and of theirrelations are given to consciousness, as it were, from outside as the product of knowledge,which in turn results from the active constitution and comprehension of the objective realityand is accumulated by human subjectivity and possessed by it by various means and todifferent degrees. Hence the various degrees of knowledge realize the different levels ofconsciousness.19All the forms and kinds of knowledge which human subjectivity acquires and possesses andwhich shape its consciousness with respect to its content, which is from the side of objectivemeanings, have to be distinguished from what Khatami calls self-experience.19 There is noneed to explain that self-experience consists in the understanding of one's own self and isconcerned with a kind of cognitive insight into the object that I am for myself. Such an insightintroduces a specific continuity to the diverse moments or states in the being of the self,because it reaches what constitutes their primary unity, which comes from their being rooted inthe self. Hence it is not surprising that self-experience more than any other form of knowledgemust be consistent with consciousness; for its subject matter is the self, with which - as will befully demonstrated in the course of further analysis - consciousness remains in an intimatesubjective union. At this point self-experience and consciousness come closest together, but, atthe same time, they deviate from each other, since consciousness, for all the intimacy of itssubjective union with the self, does not objectivize the self or anything else with regard to itsexistence and its acting. This function is performed by acts of self-experience themselves. It isto them that human subjectivity owes the objectivizing contact with itself and with its actions.Because of self-experience consciousness can reflect actions and their relations to the self.Without it consciousness would be deprived of its immanent meanings so far as human self isconcerned - when it presents itself as the object- and would then exist as if it were suspended inthe void. This situation is postulated by the idealists, because it is only then that consciousnessmay be viewed as the subject producing its own subject matter regardless of any factors outsideof it. Had Khatami pursued this line of thought he might be led to ask whether consciousnessshould not be regarded as a real subject or even whether it, so to speak, does create itself. Dueto the presential experience, the self, as the subject, is cognitively grasped as an object. In thisway human subjectivity and its action have an objective significance in consciousness. Thereflection by consciousness, which is not only subjective but also constitutes the basis for19 Cf. SM, ch.1; for his discussion on the self see; FSPV ch.3; TSB, ch.3-5;also: Descartes and Ibn Arabi on theIlluminative self, Journal of Muhyi al-Din Ibn Arabi Society, Fall 2002; Modern Conceptual Analysis of the Selfand the Mystical Experience of the Self, Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research, 2005.20subjectivation, does not abolish the objective meaningful constituents of the self or of itsactions; rather, it derives them continuously from self-experience.However, the coherence of self-experience and consciousness has to be recognized as the basicfactor of the equilibrium in the inner life of a human subjectivity, especially so far as theintellectual constitution of human subjectivity is concerned. Human being as the subject ismeanwhile the object; it is the object for the subject, and it does not lose its objectivesignificance when reflected by consciousness. In this respect self-experience seems prior toconsciousness, and cognitively relates it to the self and its actions, even if consciousness initself were not intentionally directed toward them. At the same time, self-experience sets a limitto consciousness, the limit beyond which the process of subjectivation cannot proceed.Moreover, the objectivizing turn of self-experience toward the self and toward actions relatedto the self is also a turn to consciousness as such, so far as consciousness also becomes theobject of self-experience. This explains why, when human subjectivity is conscious of itsacting, it also knows it is acting; indeed, it knows it is acting consciously. It is aware of beingconscious and of acting consciously. Self-experience has as its object not only humansubjectivity and action, but also human subjectivity as being aware of itself and aware of itsaction. This awareness is objectivized by self-experience. Thus the objective meaning in whatconsciousness reflects appertains not to any being or any acting of human subjectivity who ismy own self, but solely to the being and the acting that involves consciousness and of which Iam aware. Human subjectivity has an ontetic experience of its being conscious and by this wayit is aware of the consciousness of its being and acting. But the process does not extendindefinitely; the limit to the reflecting of consciousness is set by self-experience. If, on the onehand, it provides the basis for this reflecting- since it forms the content of consciousness- thenon the other hand, it marks out the boundary circumscribing its own sphere due to whichconsciousness is established in the existence of human subjectivity, and ascertains itself asimmanent in the being instead of spiralling away in an unending sequence ofself-subjectivations.21As stated, however, consciousness itself was to be seen neither as an individual subject nor asan independent faculty. The subsequent analysis has shown even more clearly that whatKhatami understands by consciousness has at its roots the same cognitive potentiality as thatto which human subjectivity owes all the processes of comprehension and objectivizingfunctions. It springs from the common stock of this potentiality, emerging from the backgroundof the processes of comprehension and objectivizing cognition; but at the same time, it appearsto be seated more deeply inside the subject. It is precisely the reason why, as it seems, allinteriorization and subjectivation are the work of consciousness- of which more will be saidlater.That human subjectivity can be aware not only of its own self and of actions related to it butalso of the consciousness of its actions in relation to the self appears as the work of selfexperience.In such phrases as It is how I became conscious of my action or I becameconscious of this or that, Khatami speaks of an actualization of a conscious process, though infact he means an actualization of a self-knowing process; for consciousness itself cannot makeus aware of anything, because this can be achieved only intentionally, that is, by an act ofcognition. Nevertheless, Khatami argues that since consciousness is intimately united withcognition, we have expressed ourselves correctly.It is highly symptomatic and not without reason that Khatami has these two terms in thetranscendent vocabulary of his ontetic system. They bring order into many problems of a noeticas well as of an ontetic nature and clarify, on the one hand, the objective aspect of the subjectand, on the other, that composite and complex constitution of the subject's nucleus which is theself. It is this subjectiveness of the object that is to be analyzed. But before begining, Khatamistresses once again that what is meant when speaking of being conscious of an action is notjust the reflection itself in consciousness of a conscious act but intentional self-experience. Bythis phrase it is meant that by an act of self-knowledge I objectivize my action in relation to mysubjectivity. I objectivize the given essential constituent of my action in the actual acting of mysubjectivity and not of what would only happen in my subjectivity; furthermore, my acting is a22conscious event and thus, by being performed according to the will, may have a moral value,positive or negative, and so is either good or evil. All this which is constitutive of action andobjectivized by an act of self-experience becomes the content of consciousness. Thisobjectivation allows us to see the objective sense of consciousness, that is, the relation ofconsciousness to the objective world. Khatami thus speaks of consciousness from anobjective point of view by virtue of the meanings of the different objects through which itmanifests itself. But Khatami speaks of consciousness from the objective point of view also ina more specific manner with respect to the meaningful constitution appertaining inconsciousness to the self, to its mode of being and operations spreading through a radius ofinterconnectedness. This sense, or more strictly speaking, this set of senses, consciousnessowes to self-knowledge. Because of its various senses consciousness appears also in a specialmodality of self-consciousness. It is self-experience that contributes to the formation ofself-consciousness.The above analysis shows that every human self constitutes, in a way, a meeting point whereall the intentional acts of self-knowledge concentrate. This is the knowledge that at the verypoint constituted by the objectified self meets everything in any way connected with or in anyway referring to the self. Hence Khatami argues for having, for instance, moral self-experience,which precedes fundamentally the science of morals, not to mention ethics; we have alsoreligious self-experience prior to anything we know of religion; or again, there is the socialself-experience independent from what we know about society, and so on.20 Self-experience isconcentrated on the self as its own proper object and accompanies it to all the domains to whichthe self itself extends. Nevertheless, self-experience never objectivizes any component of thesedomains for its own sake but solely and exclusively because of and in relation to the self.From the preceding remarks we now see more or less clearly Khatamis conclusion that thefunction of self-experience is opposed to any egotistic approach to consciousness, to any20 Cf. SM, Ch. One. Khatami has also criticized modern moral approach to the self; see his LMP. Also see: Onthe Dilemma of Morality: Self-interest and Altruism, in Falsafeh36, I (spring 2008); Morality, Rationality andImpartiality, in Falsafeh 37, I (spring 2009)23approach that would tend to present consciousness (even if only vicariously) in the guise of thepure self. Nor has self-experience anything in common with an objectivizing cognition thatwould be concerned with an abstracted and generalized self, with any sort of egology. To selfexperiencethe object is the concrete self itself, human subjectivity as such. Indeed, there maybe even some question whether knowledge, which strictly speaking has a general object, isthe right term in relation to self-experience; for self-experience not only has as its object theunique, individual self, human subjectivity, but is also permanently and inextricably entangledin the details referring to the self. In this analysis Khatami has in focus self-cognition ratherthan self-experience. It consists in the acts of objectivizing penetration of the self with all itsconcreteness and its concomitant detailedness, which yields to no generalization whatever. Buteven so, it is still the real knowledge of oneself as an integral whole; for it is not restricted onlyto the recording of details that have a bearing upon the self but continuously strives aftergeneralizations. Such generalizations are, for instance, all the opinions one has of oneself orjudgements of oneself, which belong to self-experience, and it alone can form them. It is to benoted, however, that these opinions-any overall view of the self-are reflected in consciousness;thus, not only are the singular data which have a bearing upon the self reflected inconsciousness but, in addition, the continuously developing overall complex that the self keepson unfolding.Self-experience is not just a specific instance of the knowledge of human subjectivity ingeneral, even though the self, which it strives to objectivize as comprehensively as possible, is,both from the ontological and intentional points of view - as the object of self-experience.Nevertheless, all the cognitive work it performs proceeds solely from self-experience toself-understanding but does not go as far as to include any generalizations about humansubjectivity as such. There is in cognition a subtle but precisely marked out boundary betweenthe knowledge of human subjectivity in general and self-experience, the knowledge of the self.The knowledge of the self, however, might in its concreteness come prior to the knowledge ofhuman subjectivity. Yet it draws upon it, because self-experience of my self makes use of all I24know about human subjectivity in general, that is to say, of different opinions about humansubjectivity I might hold or only know about, as well as of the cognition of concretesubjectivity, in order to gain a better understanding of my own self and the self as such. But itdoes not resort to the knowledge of its own self for a better understanding of the other humansubjects. The knowledge of human subjectivity, in general, turns to the resources of selfexperienceto obtain a deeper insight into its own object. Self-experience, on the contrary, asKhatami mentions, takes the knowledge of human subjectivity into consideration, but in itsdirect orientation stops at the self and keeps to its singular specific cognitive intention; for it isin the self that human subjectivity always finds fresh material for cognizing itself.The analysis of self-experience gives us a better understanding of that function ofconsciousness which we have assigned to it previously, namely, the function of reflecting; inthis respect consciousness is not restricted to a simple reflecting of everything that constitutesthe object of cognition and knowledge - and specially the object of self-understanding and selfexperience-but it also in its own peculiar manner permeates and illuminates all it reflects.Khatami does not mean by that to deprive consciousness of its specifically characteristic cognitivevitality. In fact, all that has been said here about self-experience may lead to the falseimpression that the reflecting or reflecting function of consciousness may appear lost in selfexperience,in the objectivizing processes of self-comprehension, which concentrates on theself as the object. The question may then well be asked whether in view of the prominent roleassigned to self-experience there are any reasons for the distinctive existence of consciousnessat all. This question leads to another, of a methodological nature: how has the conception ofconsciousness here outlined been reached, and, particularly, how did Khatami comes to theconception of the relation of consciousness to self-experience? Obviously, these questions areof paramount significance in view of both the foregoing remarks and the forthcoming analyses.To answer them it is necessary to recall that the transcendent approach to consciousness isfounded on experience, which allows for the objectivation of the full kinesis. Thus theinterpretation of consciousness in its relation to self-experience already assumes, albeit25antecedently, the total, overall conception of human subjectivity, which Khatami intends todevelop in the course of his ontetic system. In that approach the decisive factor for unravelingthe problem of the consciousness/self-experience relation seems to be the question of theobjectiveness and the simultaneous subjectiveness of human being. Consciousness is theground on which the self manifests itself in all its peculiar objectiveness and at the same timefully experiences its own subjectiveness. Khatami thus has emerging into view the otherfunction of consciousness, as if another trait of it, which in the living constitution of humansubjectivity complements the permeative and illuminative function of reflecting, and in a wayendows consciousness with the ultimate reason for its presence in the specific constitution ofthe subject who acts.As Khatami argues, the tasks of consciousness do not end with its illuminative and reflectingfunction. In some respects this function might appear primary but not unique. In fact, theessential function of consciousness is to form human experience and thus to allow it toexperience in a special way its own subjectiveness. This is precisely why, if we are also tounderstand the action issuing from human subjectivity so far as this constitutes an experience- hence in the experiential dimension of human subjectiveness- we cannot restrict thetranscendent analysis of consciousness solely to its reflecting. The task of consciousness doesnot end with the reflecting of an action in its relation to the self - this takes place as if on theoutside but proceeds into the inner dimension. The reflect of consciousness gives us a yetdeeper insight into the interior of actions and of their relation to the self, and it is only there thatthe role of consciousness comes into full view. Consciousness allows us not only to have aninner view of our actions (immanent perception) and of their kinetic dependence on the self,but also to experience these actions as actions and as our own.It is in this sense that consciousness subjectivizes the objective. Subjectivation is to someextent identifiable with experiencing; at least, it is in experience that we become aware of it.While constituting a definite reality which as the object of self-experience reveals itself in itsown peculiar objectiveness, human being, owing to its consciousness, also becomes26subjectified to the extent to which consciousness conditions its experience of action beingperformed by it as human subjectivity, and thereby secures the experience had of humansubjectivity in its kinetically efficacious relation to action. But then, everything that constitutesthe intentional, objective world of human subjectivity also becomes subjectified in the sameway. This world, with its objective content, may be analyzed also in its image reflected inconsciousness. But it is then, if it becomes the material of experience, definitely incorporatedinto the sphere of the individual subjectiveness of every self.In connection with all this Khatami introduces a new trait of consciousness, with a separatefunction, which differs from the illuminative, reflecting function already described, and thushaving a constitutive significance. It might be called reflexive and assumed that it appertainsto consciousness itself as well as to what the so-called actual state of consciousness iscomposed of, to that specific resultant of acts of consciousness. This state of consciousnesspoints not only to the reflecting and all that is reflected at any given moment, but also toexperience, in which the subjectiveness of human being, as the subject having the experience,gains a special experiential prominence. It is in this sense that the reflexive trait orreflexiveness of consciousness denotes that consciousness turns back naturally upon thesubject, if thereby the subjectiveness of the subject is brought into prominence in experience.The reflexiveness of consciousness has to be distinguished from reflection proper to humansubjectivity in its cognitive acts. Reflection presupposes the intentionality of these acts, theircognitive direction upon the object. If we consider the activity of human subjectivity at thelevel of abstract thinking, then, Khatami says, we might say that thought becomesreflective when we turn toward a previously performed act in order to grasp more fully itsobjective content and possibly also its character or constitution. Thus reflective thoughtbecomes an important element in the development of all understanding, of all knowledge,including the knowledge of the self. Hence reflection accompanies and serves consciousness.But reflection and reflectiveness are of themselves insufficient when it comes to constituting anexperience. This necessitates a special turning back upon the subject, and, along with27experience, the emphasized subjectiveness of the experiencing self. It is this particular mode ofthe constitutive function as proper to consciousness that may be defined as reflexive, whichimplies that it directs everything back upon the subject. In this perspective Khatami speaks ofthe reflexiveness and not the reflectiveness of consciousness.The function of consciousness, in which it turns back upon the subject, differs from thereflecting and reflecting when human subjectivity, as the subject/the self, is present as theobject. In this sense one may also understand by reflexiveness an essential as well as veryspecific moment of consciousness. Khatami, however, adds at once that this specific momentbecomes apparent only when we observe and trace consciousness in its intrinsic, organicrelation to human subjectivity, in particular, human subjectivity in action. It is one thing to bethe subject, another to be cognized (that is, objectivized) as the subject, and a still differentthing to experience one's self as the subject of one's own acts and experiences. Thisdiscrimination is important for all further analyses, which is to make to grasp the whole kineticreality of the subject who acts and to account for the subjectiveness that is given in experience.Of course, human subjectivity is more than just the subject of its being and its acting; it is thesubject insofar as it is a being of realizeate nature, which leads to consequences particularly inhuman subjectivity which ontologically appears in contradistinction to processes, events, andideas as an autonomous, self-centered individual being. In this notion, the concrete subjectivityexperiences itself as the distinctive subject. It is this experience that allows it to designate itselfby means of the pronoun I which always designates a concrete subjectivity. However, thedenotation of this first personal pronoun, thus also of the self, appears more comprehensivethan that of the autonomous individual being, because the first combines the moment ofexperienced subjectiveness with that of ontetic subjectiveness, while the second speaks only ofthe individual being as the ground of existence and action. Obviously, the present interpretationof the self relies upon the conception of consciousness being unfolded here, as does its relationto human being as the real subject. It implies the reflexiveness of consciousness; for if wedetach that experience of our subjectiveness, which is the ground for my saying, I am the28self, from the real subject that this particular self is, then this experiential self would representnothing but a content of consciousness. Hence come up the fundamental significance of thereflexive turn of consciousness upon the real subject, whereby consciousness co-constitutes itin its own dimension.It is thus that the self is the real subject having the experience of its subjectiveness or, in otherwords, constituting itself in consciousness. This implies to conclude that it is impossible todetach the experiential self from its ontological foundations, from the constitution of humansubjectivity. The transcendent analysis of consciousness ought even to have grounded the selfon a more secure ontetic basis of its own. Everybody is given in a total or simple experience asan autonomous, individual real being, as existing and acting. But everybody is also given tohimself as the concrete self, and this is achieved by means of both self-consciousness and selfexperience.Self-experience ascertains that the being, who objectively is I, subjectivelyconstitutes my self, if it is in it that I have the experience of my subjectiveness. Therefore, notonly am I conscious of my self (on the ground of self-experience) but owing to myconsciousness in its reflexive function I also experience my self, I have the experience ofmyself as the concrete subject of the self's subjectiveness. Consciousness is not just an aspectbut also an essential dimension or an actual moment of the reality of the being that I am, sinceit constitutes its subjectiveness in the experiential sense. This being, which in its onteticconstitution is basically a real individual object, would never without consciousness constituteitself as the self. It seems that this is how we have to interpret the manner in whichconsciousness is incorporated into the ontological constitution of the being that is human beingif we are to bring out its subjectiveness in the correct proportions, that is, the subjectivenessthat makes of concrete subjectivity the unique and individual self.It is perhaps worth considering still another aspect of the way that Khatamis discussion ofconsciousness leads from its reflecting function to experience, and not inversely.Consciousness, as concluded in this illuminative context, is a specific dimension of that uniquereal being which is the concrete subjectivity. That being is neither overshadowed by nor29absorbed in consciousness, albeit this would be the case according to the fundamental tenet ofidealistic thought that esse equals percipi; for idealists maintain that to be is the same as to beconstituted by consciousness, and do not recognize any mode of being apart fromconsciousness and consciousness alone. Khatamis transcendent approach to the matterhowever is the opposite: consciousness in intimate union with the ontologically founded beingand acting of the concrete subjectivity does not absorb in itself or overshadow this being, itskinetic reality, but, on the contrary, discloses it inwardly and thereby reveals it in its specificdistinctness and unique concreteness. This disclosing is precisely what the refexive function ofconsciousness consists in. Thanks to the reflexive function of consciousness human subjectivityis directed, as it were, inward, but still maintains the full dimensions of its rational essence.Being directed inward is accompanied by experiencing, and is, to some extent, identical withexperience. In this interpretation an experience is seen as manifesting more than a reflex thatappears as though on the surface of human subjectivity and acting. Indeed experience is thatspecific form of the actualization of the subject which human being owes to consciousness.Because of it the actual energies which, when taken together, constitute the multifarious anddifferentiated wealth of its virtualities, are actualized according to the pattern of subjectivenessproper to human being. Moreover, while so actualized they receive in experience their finalsubjective shape.Nevertheless, consciousness, as long as it is but a reflected image, remains objectively alooffrom the self; when, however, it becomes the basis of experience, when experience isconstituted by its reflexiveness, the objective aloofness disappears and consciousnesspenetrates the subject shaping it experientially every time an experience occurs.Naturally, the reflecting and the shaping of the subject are accomplished in different ways: toreflect consciousness one retains the objective meaning of the subject-its objective status - butone shapes the self in the pure subjectiveness of experience. This is very important. On the onehand, the functional duality in consciousness allows us to remain within the limits of oursubjectiveness without losing the actual objectiveness in the awareness of our being. On the30other hand, the fact that our experience is formed because of consciousness, that withoutconsciousness there is no experience - though there may be different manifestations of life,different actualizations of virtualities- is in its own way explained by the attribute rational fromthe Khatamis conception of human subjectivity.Furthermore, consciousness opens the way to the emergence of the spiritual enactment ofhuman subjectivity and gives us an insight into it. The spiritual aspect of human acts and actionmanifests itself in consciousness, which allows us to undergo the experiential innerness of ourbeing and acting. Although it seems that the foundations, or rather the roots of spirituality, liebeyond the direct scope of experience - we only reach them by inference - spirituality itself hasits distinctive experiential expression shaping itself through the complete sequence of itsmanifestations.This is brought to light in the intimate and in a way constitutive relation between experienceproper to human subjectivity and the reflexive function of consciousness. Indeed, humanexperience of itself and of everything making it up, of all its world, is necessarily occurringin a rational framework of reference, for such is the nature of consciousness, and it realizes thenature of experience as well as human subjectivity as an experiencing being.ActionHowever, human subjectivity has the experience of itself in action;21 it is conscious of itself asthe one who acts, as the subjective agent of action. A separate question concerns how we are tounderstand the reflecting of action in consciousness when it extends beyond the subjectivesphere of human subjectivity and is enacted in the external world. But even then humansubjectivity, thanks to the reflexive function of consciousness, has the experience of its actionswithin the limits of its own subjectiveness; it experiences an action as acting, as doing, ofwhich it is the subjective agent and which is also a profound image and manifestation of whatits self is composed of, what it actually is; it draws a strict distinction between its acting and21 see Human Subjectivity: Consciousness and Action in Journal of Shii Islamic Studies, Fall 2008.31everything that only takes place or happens in its self. The difference between actio andpassio has its first experiential basis. The distinction itself cannot be but the deed of selfexperience;it belongs to the significative aspect of the reflecting function of consciousness.But it is also present in experience: human subjectivity experiences its acting as somethingthoroughly different from anything that only happens, anything only occurring in it.It is also only in connection with its action that human subjectivity experiences as its own themoral value; it experiences them in the attitude toward them, an attitude that is at onceemotional and appreciative. At any rate, it is not only conscious of the morality of its actionsbut it actually experiences it, often very deeply. Objectively, both action and moral valuesbelong to a real subject, that is, to human subjectivity as their agent; simply, they exhibit intheir being the derivative type of reality that is in a specific manner related to and dependent onthe subject. Simultaneously, both action and its corresponding moral value function in athoroughly subjective manner in experience - which consciousness conditions by its reflexivefunction rather than only reflecting it because of self-experience; for this would still give but anobjectified awareness of action and its moral value.Both functions of consciousness participate in this remarkable drama of innerness, the drama ofgood and evil enacted on the inner stage of human subjectivity by and among its actions. ThusKhatami concludes that consciousness, owing to its reflecting function closely related to selfknowledge,allows us, on the one hand, to gain an objective awareness of the good or evil thatwe are the agents of in any particular action - while, on the other hand, it enables us toexperience the good or evil in which its reflexiveness is manifested. As Khatami remarks, thisexperience is by no means merely an added or superficial reflexing of an action or of its moralqualification as good or evil. On the contrary, what Khatami is considering here has areflexively inward direction that makes of action itself as well as of the moral good or bad thefully subjective reality of human being. In the subjectiveness they get their finishing touches. Itis then that human subjectivity has the experience of good or evil simply in itself , in its self;32it thereby experiences itself as the one who is either good or evil. So Khatami comes to see themoral dimension of human subjectivity.The moral dimension is also the dimension of that experience in which the good and the evil, asthe moral values of the subject who acts itself, become the object of comprehension orexfoliation; indeed, this exfoliation is always becoming more and more profound. Thisexperience, along with this exfoliation, was unquestionably broader than either humansubjectivity - comprehending or the simultaneously developing self-comprehending containedin experiencing one's self.Here one may ask whether this self-experience (that is, experiencing of one's self) and humansubjectivity - comprehending that developed with it (that is, the awareness of humansubjectivity based on self-experience) were at all transferable to that ever expanding sphere ofhuman experience of things external to the self. This of course is a significant question. Wetook it up again in Khatamis discussion of self-experience, and now he considers it once more.For there is no denying that the sphere of self-experience and self-comprehending serves as aprivileged vantage point, a point especially productive of meanings in experience and in theunderstanding of human subjectivity.That is why, while retaining all the specific uniqueness of self-experience as well as of theexperience had of the self, Khatami strives in one way or another to draw knowledge of humansubjectivity from the source of self-experience and self-knowledge. This happens presumablybecause from the very start Khatami takes a double stance: beginning inside ourselves wego out of our self toward human subjectivity and at the same time we proceed from humansubjectivity back to the self. Thus our knowledge of human subjectivity proceeds as if incycles. This aspect of human subjectivity indicates nothing but its kinetic constitution.As I mentioned above, Khatami explains this kinesis by Mulla Sadra's doctrine of thesubstantial movement (harakat johari) which is in its turn based on his specific theory ofBeing, from one hand, and a reformulation of the principle of potency-act in the traditionalmetaphysics, from other hand. Khatami expands this doctrine to justify a kinesis proper to what33consciousness discovered from within the cognitive aspect of human subjectivity. This kinesisis not only realized in the field of consciousness but is, as I see, also thoroughly pervaded byconsciousness.It is to the experience of I do that every body faces the fact that I act. Because of thisexperience we ourselves are placed inside this fact. Similarly, the fullness of an experience isinherent in our process of experiencing, and thus by analogy and generalization it is the basisfor the formation of this experience. For the self is a human subjectivity and human subjectivityis this, that, or any other self. Then, when it is you, he, or anybody else who acts, theiracting can be understood on the ground of experiencing our own acting, in I act. Theexperience of acting is subjective in the sense that it keeps us within the limits of the concretesubjectivity of the self who acts, without however obscuring the intersubjectivity that is neededfor the understanding and interpretation of the experiencing.The objectivation of the fact of the subject who actsrequires an equally objective presentationof integral kinesis. For this experiential fact occurs not in isolation but in the context of theentire kinesis and in organic relation to it. The kinesis in question is the total kinesis that ispresent in the complete experience of human subjectivity. Not everything belonging to thekinesis is reflected in consciousness. For instance, practically nothing of the vegetative kinesisof the body is reflected in consciousness. Similarly, not all the factors of the kinesis may beconsciously experienced by it. Khatami has already mentioned the disproportion between thetotality of human life and the scope or range of its experiences.At any rate, it is the conditions of experience that seem to dictate in the analysis of the kinesisthe need to put aside at present the aspect of consciousness and the questions bearing only uponexperiencing. It is not by accident that Khatami discriminated the total experience of humansubjectivity from its various aspects, of which its inner aspect was even then seen as beingclosely connected with consciousness.All the same, it is not only the kinesis proper to human subjectivity that receives its basicreflection in consciousness; human subjectivity is aware as well of the main trends in its34kinesis, this awareness being connected also with its experiencing them. Indeed, it experiencesacting and doing as something essentially different from the mere happening, that is to say,from what only takes place or goes on in it and in what it as human subjectivity takes no activepart. Having the experience of the two, objectively different constitutions of the the subjectwho acts and the something-happens-in-it together with their differentiation in the field ofexperience, provides the evidence, on the one hand, of the essential contiguity of humanconsciousness with its being; on the other hand, the differentiation of experience gives each ofthese constitutions that innerness and subjectiveness which in general we owe toconsciousness; however, Khatami is not interested in experiencing as such but in thoseconstitutions which to be objectively differentiated require that we rely upon the totalexperience of human subjectivity and not merely on the evidence which might be supplied byour consciousness. The immanent experience itself is insufficient with respect to all theprocesses, operations, events and states of the body, all that pertains to the life of the organism.Khatami thinks that we always have to reach to other sources than the merely spontaneous andinstantaneous evidence of consciousness itself and the experiences associated with it; we haveto supplement it continuously from the outside in order to make our knowledge of humansubjectivity in this dimension as complete as possible.The two objective constitutions, i.e. the subject who acts and something-happens-in-humansubjectivity, realize the two fundamental lines of the kinesis proper to human subjectivity.These directions are mutually opposite, so far as human activeness is visualized andactualized in one, while its certain passiveness, and passivity, are in the other. In each of theseelemental lines of the kinesis proper to human subjectivity the phenomenon or the content ofvisualization corresponds to the actual constitution, and, conversely, each constitutionmanifests itself as the phenomenon. The activeness and the passiveness visualized in either lineare the constituents of the constitutions and the objective ground for their differentiation. Theactiveness in the the subject who acts constitution is something different from the35passiveness of the something-happens-in-human subjectivity constitution, the two beingmutually opposite. In this opposition the whole constitution, the one and the other, takes part.As Khatami considers, activeness and passiveness to be not only mutually opposed butalso conditioned and realized by each other, we can also draw a line separating what we dofrom what happens in us, though the things on either side of the line not only differ but alsomutually account for themselves. This has the greatest importance for understanding the thesubject who acts constitution and subsequently for its possibly complete interpretation.Khatami says that human actions and all that happens in it are not only mutually opposed butalso distinctly correlated in the sense of a certain parity of both facts or both constitutions. Forspeaking of acting we say the subject who acts and of what takes place in it we say ithappens in human subjectivity, so that in either statement human subjectivity stands as thekinetic subject. Human actions, just as much as the things that happen in it, provide therealization of the kinesis proper to human subjectivity. Both have their source in humansubjectivity; and thus if in another aspect we speak of activeness and passiveness as of twodifferent directions in the same kinesis, we thereby assert that the direction from within iscommon to both- the more so as it forms part of the essence of all kinesis. Though activenessand passiveness differentiate the kinesis they do not deprive it of the unity issuing out of thesame kinetic subject; this, however, in no way alters the fact that action differs from the rest ofthe kinetic manifestations of human subjectivity, the manifestations that are included in thecategory of passiveness.It also seems necessary to call attention to two different forms of passiveness that are expressedin the propositions, Something happens in human subjectivity and Something happens withhuman subjectivity. In ordinary speech these propositions may sometimes be usedindiscriminately; often, in speaking of something happening with a human subjectivity, weactually think of what takes place in it . Actually, when speaking of what happens with ahuman subjectivity we refer to what human subjectivity undergoes from outside. This is anentirely different kind of passiveness. Rather than the kinetic subject, and the source of what36occurs, human subjectivity is then merely an object that only undergoes what another subject oreven another force is doing with it. Undergoing as such refers to the passiveness of humansubjectivity, the subject, but says nothing, at least not directly, of the subject's inner kinesis, inparticular nothing of the kinesis referred to in the proposition Something happens in humansubjectivity. In Khatamis approach to human subjectivity, the kinesis proper to human subjectivity isinterpreted by analogy to the kinesis of all beings. The kinesis of being is one in particular toSadra, Khatami owes the conception in which the kinetic nature of being is expressed inphilosophical terms. This is not limited to the concept of act alone but includes the conjugateconceptual whole formed by the pair, potency and act. The dialectic conjugation of the pairmakes them so essentially referring to each other that when pointing to one we at the same timeindicate the other; for to grasp the correlated meaning of either, the understanding of the otheris indispensable. It is for this reason that act cannot be understood apart from potency and viceversa. The terms potency and act need little explanation. Potency may be defined as apotentiality, as something that already is but also is not yet: as something that is in preparation,is available, and even ready at hand but is not actually fulfilled. The act is the actualization ofpotentiality, its fulfilment.As is to be seen, the meanings of both concepts are strictly correlated and inhere in theconjugate they form rather than in each of them separately. Their conjugation reveals not onlythe differentiated, though mutually coincident states of existence, but also the transitions fromone to the other. It is these transitions that objectivize the constitution of all kinesis inherent inbeing, in being as such, which constitutes the proper subject of metaphysics, and at the sametime in every and any being, regardless of the branch of knowledge whose specific concern itconstitutes. Khatami says that at this point metaphysics appears as the intellectual soil whereinall the domains of knowledge have their roots. According to Khatami, we do not seem to haveas yet any other conceptions and any other language which would adequately render the kineticessence of change-of all change whatever occurring in any being - apart from those that we37have been endowed with by the philosophy of potency and act. By means of this conception wecan grasp and describe precisely any kinesis that occurs in any being. It is to them we also haveto revert when discussing the kinesis proper to human subjectivity.On this basis, Khatami concludes that once we keep in human subjectivity the correlate itimplies, the concept of the act has primarily an ontetic significance. The two different statesof being, to which correspond two different forms of existence, are not indicated solely by thetwo terms (potency and act) essential to this conception. In addition, the transition frompotency to act, termed actualization, is a transition in the order of existence; it indicates somesort of becoming, not in the absolute sense-this is possible only when something comes intobeing ex nihil- but in a relative sense, becoming based on an already existing being and fromwithin its inner constitution. The kinesis of being is intrinsically connected with its veryexistence and is also the basis for, and the source of, all the constitutions that may bedistinguished in it. Every actualization contains in itself both the possibility and the act, whichis the real fulfilment of the possibility; hence it contains them not as two entities but as twointerrelated forms of existence. Actualization always implies the following pattern ofexistences: what exists as a possibility may, because it thus exists, come into existence in anact; and conversely, what came into existence in the act did so because of its previous existenceas potentiality. In actualization possibility and act constitute the two moments or the two phasesof concrete existence joined together in a kinetic unity. Moreover, the act does not signifysolely that the state of fulfilled potentiality has ended; it also signifies the transition itself frompotentiality to fulfilment, the very fulfilment. It now becomes evident that there is need of afactor that would allow this transition or fulfilment to be accomplished.Applying the conception of the act to the kinesis that is proper to human subjectivity andconstitutes the vital core of the kinetic conjugate of action and human subjectivity, Khatamiasserts at this stage of the discussion that it fits both essential forms of human kinesis knownfrom and by experience. The constitution of the subject who acts and the constitution ofsomething-happens-in-human subjectivity constitute the concrete manifestation of the kinesis38proper to human subjectivity. Some of their equivalence consists in human subjectivity beingpresent in either as its kinetic subject. The equivalence exists from the point of view of humankinesis itself. From this viewpoint, having assumed the analogy of being, Khatami regardshuman acting as well as what happens in it to be the fulfilment of a potentiality. The one andthe other is an actualization, the kinetic unity of potentiality and act. This way of grasping theproblem is justified by the general kinesis of human subjectivity. It also enables us to search forand enforce those potentialities which are inherent in human subjectivity at the beginning of itsvarious actings and of what Khatami calls the various happenings, the different things thathappen in it.The difference of the activeness-passiveness type that occurs between the acting of humansubjectivity and the happening in human subjectivity, the difference between kinetic acting andcertain kinetic passiveness, cannot obscure or annul human kinesis, which is inherent in one aswell as in the other form. It does not obscure in the sense of the psychological experience anddoes not annul in the sense of the need of a realistic interpretation. Essentially, human kinesis isinterpreted by the concept of the act. In this sense the term act adequately denotes thekinetic content of both constitutions: the subject who acts and something-happens-in-man.The question remains whether it is equally adequate to show the specific nature of action. Toput the problem precisely, Khatami asks wh