Renate Burns

An analysis of Mark Bevir's account of the role of language and tradition on the one hand, and the individual on the other in the generation of ideas, and proposal of an alternative account It endorses Bevir's project of finding a middle way between individualism and collectivism, but finds that Bevir exaggerates the role of the individual. It argues that human selves always remains dependent on language even to articulate their own intentions to themselves. Whilst they have a capacity to create new linguistic expressions, this is always limited to the exploration of possibilities already latent in the language. However, no one is a mere recipient and conduit of a given language: everyone hands it on transformed by their unique appropriation of it. The antifoundationalist analyses of Wittgenstein, Newman Collingwood, and Neurath are invoked to argue that this state of affairs also applies to the individual's relation to the beliefs and values inherited traditionally: there is no possibility of a wholesale rejection of what is received; no individual can reject all received traditions, and erect an entire belief structure from scratch, but can only modify it on a piecemeal basis, so that received tradition always remains constitutive of the individual mind. It is also argued that human self-consciousness is always socially formed, and no person ever completely integrated, and stabilized. No one is ever therefore in a state of complete self-possession. One therefore must reject Bevir's claim that the historian of ideas must initially presume that individuals are sincere, conscious and rational in their expressed beliefs: ‘sincere’ self-consciousness is an ideal never fully achieved, and beliefs as to what constitutes ‘rationality’ are so varied that specific presumptions cannot be made.

From a sociological and social psychological perspective, this paper outlines and develops a theoretical framework with which to define and analyse consciousness, emphasizing the role of language, collective representations, conceptions of self, and self-reflectivity in human conscious phenomena. The paper focuses on the social origins of conscious phenomena, on collective as well as individual levels. Part 1 of the paper dealt with collective consciousness. This second part analyses individual consciousness as arising in the context of a person experiencing herself as an object of collective representation and collective reflection and discourse. Individual consciousness is the outcome of processes of collective naming, classifying, monitoring, judging, reflecting on, and conducting discussions and discourses about, the individual herself. A participant learns in the collective context a naming and classification of herself, of her judgments, actions, and predispositions. In acquiring a language and conceptual framework for this mode of activity -- along with experience and skills in reflective discussion -- she develops a capability of inner reflection and inner dialogue about self, which are characteristic features of individual consciousness. The analysis goes on to distinguish multiple modes of individual awareness and consciousness, distinguishing awareness from consciousness proper, and also identifying pre- and sub-conscious levels. This points up the complexity of the human mind, in part its elaboration through processes of social interaction and construction.