Wannamaker Summary - Chapter 6

Chapter Summary Of The Philosophy Of Freedom
Olin D. Wannamaker

Chapter 6 The Human Individuality
A consideration of the human individuality will aid us in both of these necessary steps --both in knowing ourselves, rather than merely being subjectively aware of the self, and also in determining the nature of the perception. Consider together the two entities, human consciousness and the perception. How can a representation of an external object enter my consciousness? The difficulty in understanding this is due to a limited conception of the human individuality. This difficulty disappears when we get rid of this limited conception of the human being. I am not only an individual being, but also a being merged with the world as a totality. The same stream of cosmic ongoings passes through the world of perceptions and also through me, as a being belonging to the cosmos, thus creating in me the perception of subject and of object. This stimulates my activity of thinking, which, through an act of inner observation that we may call intuition, draws the corresponding concept from the world of concepts. A single concept, individualized in association with one perception, then remains within the self, as a mental picture of the perception, enabling me later to recognize the same perception or other perceptions of the same kind.

Human beings live in a rhythmic alternation between the two aspects of their two-fold being: the personal, in self-consciousness, and the universal in consciousness of the world. The experience of the personal aspect is intensified by our life of feeling. This conception of the human being and of the mental picture removes the difficulty of understanding their conjunction in human consciousness. It is the objective perception which leaves the subjective mental picture within my consciousness. There is no reason for distrusting what thinking declares to be true of the world as presented to us.

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