The Bicameral Mind, the Abyss, and Underworlds

Ben Mijuskovic, in in Ben Mijuskovic, Consciousness and Loneliness: Theoria and Praxis, Chapter 8, 365–402.

Excerpt: The chapter treats two different topics but in a closely related context. First I discuss consciousness with special attention to the collapse of the distinction between its immediate and mediate aspects, and secondly I address the province of the subconscious mind with a concentration on its darker elements, since they are the primary ones that come into play in the dynamics of loneliness and aggression. Throughout the text I mainly — but not completely — focused on the negative and violent expressions of consciousness simply because those are the dangerous ones that hold humanity hostage. Accordingly, in what follows, I wish to clarify my frequent appeal to two principles and their roles in the various thinkers I have discussed: (a) spontaneity as a causa sui comparable to Schopenhauer’s irrational Will as it surfaces in Julian Jaynes’ depiction of the bicameral mind; and (b) the difference between a retrievable unconscious, as in Freud, and the subconscious as irretrievable in Kant and especially in Schopenhauer. Although Kant suggestively promises the reader to explore a deeper cognitive role for it, his assurance remains unfulfilled (Critique, xvi-xvii), while in Schopenhauer it assumes a powerful affective function in the guise of his noumenal irrational Will. …