The fourteen essays collected in this book discuss the similarities and dissimilarities in the concepts related to consciousness from ancient to medieval, Enlightenment and nineteenth and twentieth century philosophy. As the title suggests the history of consciousness is documented roughly from when it was thought to be the recognition of one's own awareness of one's perceptions of external objects, to when it was seen as a more internal, reflective activity of mind not necessarily involving any external objects of attention, and finally to when it was and is seen as a more esoteric mode of being human or human being. 

This book doesn't deal exclusively with consciousness as such.  Much of it is devoted to the historical run up to, and philosophical precursors to, what we today call consciousness.  The early chapters deal with how the writings of many of the early philosophers–among them Plato, Aristotle, Avicenna, Scotus, Ockham, Augustine, Descartes, and Spinoza–discuss the human mind.  The authors point out how the ancient and early modern philosophers did indeed touch on many of the problems associated with mental states despite the fact that they didn't have an established vocabulary for that 'thing' we today call consciousness.  (I use the simple word 'thing' to refer to consciousness strictly as a convenience because one of the main issues in this book is the fact that philosophers, both in the past and present, disagree as to exactly what sort of term is correct when referring to consciousness.) 

These authors do a good job of explaining where the word 'consciousness' might have been applied if those early philosophers had been in possession of the concept of consciousness as a distinct 'property' of the human mind or 'aspect' of personhood, and if they had had the use of both our modern insights and vocabulary necessary for its discussion.  But I found reading the first two thirds of this book somewhat tangential because it seemed to me that the authors were discussing consciousness from the position of 'what might have been' if only those early philosophers had been aware of this or that perspective on the human mind–which we now are.  It was like reading book reviews about books that were never written but could have been, if only….  In my opinion the title of the book  "Consciousness" accurately represents only the essays from chapter ten onwards.  The first two thirds of the book would be better titled "The Early History of the Concept of Mind." But having said that, I'm sure the first nine chapters will be of interest to historians of philosophy.

My interest picked up considerably as I entered chapter 10.  Kenneth Westphal's essay on Kant's response to Descartes is a very clear and yet succinct discussion of Kant's account of how the human mind is more than simply a device for viewing and/or remembering perceptions.  He discusses how Kant argued that the mind has the ability to make sense of individual sensory input with its ability to "bundle" separate items of perception into combinations that are not simply present in the mind but are meaningful to the individual.  This seems to be the first solid account of consciousness in the history of philosophy:  an individual's mind engaged in an activity, with or without that individual's intentional efforts, to make sense of both her external and internal worlds.  Westphal explains that this is what Kant means with that elusive term of his: "transcendentalism."  He points out that Kant would also say students of the human mind (in whatever university faculty) are mistaken if they try to apply the scientific laws of causality to human reasoning and behaviour because the human mind transcends the laws governing the empirical universe. 

Chapter 11 orients the discussion of consciousness within the continental tradition, specifically that of the German idealists Fichte, Shelling, and Hegel.  If the reader is not a student or fan of continental philosophy, this chapter can be challenging when it comes to statements like  "I do not think, but the absolute thinks in me; I think as far as I let the absolute spread itself out freely through me…"  (256), and, citing Shelling, "…consciousness is above all the absolute's self-consciousness" (259).  This kind of philosophy sounds so similar to theology that it's sure to make some readers uncomfortable. 

Chapter 12 deals with the Heidelberg School's response to the "higher-order account" of consciousness–an individual reflecting upon his or her own thoughts.  Their argument and alternate description of consciousness is based on the observation that a self-aware scrutiny of one's own thoughts, rather than explaining consciousness, in fact presupposes it.  Although the school's account of consciousness is compelling, author Dan Zahavi offers nine solid criticisms.

Chapter 13 examines the problems left unanswered by the attempt to define consciousness in terms of contemporary naturalism and its assumption of an objective causal theory of mind.  Author Neil Manson raises some thought-provoking problems created by the notion of unconscious mental states or processes that are left unresolved by the naturalistic perspective.

In the final chapter author Sara Heinämaa first discusses Husserl's concept of the transcendental person in which he, as Heinämaa puts it, "enriches and concretizes his account of subjectivity by enclosing the essence of the temporal unfolding of the self"  (318).  It then presents Heidegger's criticisms of Husserl.  I had trouble with this chapter due to the author's use of the terms such as "spirit" and "spiritual being" so common to continental philosophy, and sentences such as "we can understand and investigate the living body in two different ways: as a mere material thing and as an expressive gesture" (327).  While this pseudo-poetic language sounds profound, it doesn't accurately represent what the author is trying to say that Husserl said:  that the body is a material thing, but the living consciousness (or person) makes meaningful and intentional communicative actions.   

Apart from my struggle to come to terms with the continental philosophy in this book, I have only a few other complaints.  For one, I found Chapter 5 by Joel Biard somewhat awkward to read.  This may be because it was translated from its original French into English.

This is also one of the issues that underlies many of the chapters dealing with early philosophers up to and including Descartes and Spinoza:  the authors discuss the problem of how to interpret the writings of these philosophers, implying, but without actually acknowledging, that most of us read these works in English.  We're therefore subject to the difficulties of making sense of passages that have been translated from Greek, French, German, or Latin into English which are said to contain, or not contain, the word 'consciousness' itself.  For example, in Jon Miller's chapter on Spinoza, he mentions several passages where the term "being conscious of" (meaning to be aware of something) is used in the translation of Spinoza's writings.  Miller uses these passages to illustrate how Spinoza has been misinterpreted as though he were discussing the state of consciousness itself, the way it's discussed within the philosophy of mind today.  I think he's correct in this.  But he fails to mention that the problem of misunderstanding Spinoza may be alleviated in translation if, instead of using the term "being conscious of,"  the translator had simply used the term "being aware of."  Then it's not a problem stemming from Spinoza's philosophy, but rather a problem stemming from a weak or imprecise translation of his words into English.  With all due respect to philosophers, it seems to me we sometimes forget that what we perceive to be a philosophical problem at times is nothing more than a linguistic conundrum stemming from a questionable translation. 

One last complaint: while most of the chapters are well written and interesting, many of them suffer from footnoting-itis: an infestation of footnotes, sometimes literally covering more than half the page.  There are so many footnotes, and some are so long and detailed, that they become a distracting nuisance.  With so much material in the footnotes many of the chapters look like two chapters written in parallel. But despite these criticisms, I found this book an interesting read.  There is a comprehensive bibliography, and both a name and subject index that will be helpful to researchers.

© 2008 Peter B. Raabe

Peter B. Raabe teaches philosophy and has a private practice in philosophical counseling in North Vancouver, Canada. He is the author of the books Philosophical Counseling: Theory and Practice (Praeger, 2001), Issues in Philosophical Counseling (Praeger, 2002), and Philosophical Counselling and the Unconscious (Trivium, 2006)