ABSTRACT
The movement from unconscious to conscious is not the linear movement from ancient to modern, from mythical to scientific, from illusory to real, from religious to secular, from divine to human, that is, from faith to reason. Indeed, we may recall that in his final psychical model Freud connects unconsciousness, that is, repression, with the conscious ego (secondary process) and consciousness (that is, self-critical insight) with the unconscious id (primary process).4 Consciousness is dead (repressing unconscious life). We are reminded of Nietzsche's call for liberation: God is dead (repressing human life). But is the struggle with consciousness, with God, a struggle unto life or a struggle unto death, to invoke Hegel's analysis of the coming into existence of the process of mutual recognition: spirit recognizing spirit? If we deny, negate, annihilate - reduce to nothing - and do not appropriate that in and through which alone we can gain recognition, then our struggle debouches in death, in nihilism. If, however, we recognize that that which we criticize is the very origin of our critique, then our struggle will be unto life, the life of mutual recognition (see Kulak, 1997).
