ABSTRACT
This is an essay about an old painting, an even older story, and a perennial philosophical problem. The story is the Biblical one of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden; the painting is a work by the Northern Renaissance painter, Lucas Cranach the Elder. Cranach was painting five hundred years ago, at the height of the Protestant Reformation, at a time and place where the proper route to Christian salvation was the most pressing and fiercely disputed issue of the day. In the midst of these disputes the story of Adam and Eve became for a time a topic of intense scrutiny and controversy – among both theologians and painters. The immediate reason is not far to seek: if one is looking for a proper account of the prospects for man’s salvation then one must surely begin with a clear understanding of the circumstances of his Fall. But while the issues I take up in what follows shall of necessity bear on theological questions, the problem I want to pursue is not so much theological but philosophical – and specifically phenomenological. I would like to consider what this old painting of this familiar story might show us about the structures of conscious experience, and in particular about the structure of self-consciousness in human acts of judgment.
