1. A thing is not the consciousness of a thing

1.

One of the usual answers is: "A thing is that which we feel, that which affects our external senses." This answer radically distorts reality and does not explain anything about what a thing is in itself.

(a) First, there is not only what is felt. There is even something sensual that I, for example, do not feel. For example, I have not been to Australia and have never felt it with my external organs. Nevertheless, it exists, and, by the way, it exists sensuously.

(b) Consequently, it would make some sense to say that there is only what is felt in general, what is felt in principle, that which is felt by someone and at some time in general, not only by me now. But this is tantamount to asserting that everything that exists is an object for sensation in general, that it always has a correlate in one or another sentient consciousness. Such a statement, however, does not explain at all what a thing is in itself, since it presupposes that things already exist in themselves. At first, the thing must exist on its own, and then it will be felt by someone.

(c) But even if a thing first comes into being with someone's sensation, it is still not sensation itself. If a seed sown on dry soil germinates with watering or rain, it does not mean that cloves are water or rye seeds are rain. Whoever asserts that things arise with sensation does not distinguish seeds from weather, weather from clouds and clouds, clouds from the celestial background on which they appear, i.e., he does not really distinguish anything from anything. But this is how it should be, for sensations are sheer chaos. It can also be said that absolute sensationalism is based on the logical fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc, since it understands the temporal and factual connection of the object of sensation with sensation itself as causal connection.

(d) Finally, to say that a thing is that which we perceive is to substitute one of its partial moments for the whole definition, and nothing is known about the essentiality of this moment. Let us assume that every thing in one way or another, by us or by someone, here or at another time and in another place, is felt, or must be felt, or can be felt. This assertion, however, would be equivalent to saying that the tree is greenness itself, starting from the fact that all trees are green. Then, to the question: "What color is this glass lampshade?" I would have to answer: "It is the color of wood" or "This glass lampshade is wood." Such an answer can be considered absurd only if greenness is not equated with trees, lampshades, pencils, etc. and not to regard it as their definition, but only as one of their attributes, and this attribute is so general and abstract that it does not even make it possible to distinguish a pencil from the sea, the sea from a tree, a tree from a lady's hat, etc. Whoever asserts that a thing is what we feel does not distinguish one's own head from a horse's, a horse's from a dog's, etc., etc. We can agree without any fear. that all things are felt in one way or another (just as we can agree that all living things presuppose heat), but this does not mean that thingness is sensibility (just as life is not mere heat, since heat can exist in dead nature). We can feel something that is not a thing at all (such are the images of dreams, hallucinations, various errors of the senses, etc.).

e) Thus: the tangibility of a thing is one of its ways of being given in the otherness surrounding it, but it is not itself. This is the other, the otherness of the thing, and not the thing itself.

2.

All other definitions of a thing based on the ways in which it is subjectively given are hardly helpful. All things, for example, are thought in one way or another. Can we say on this basis that thingness is conceivability? Here, obviously, the same absurdities will arise as in relation to tangibility. It is possible to defend the reducibility of things to their conceivability only at the cost of a huge number of selected absurdities, although there have always been as many lovers of this type of information as you like. After all, it was always a matter of taste to reduce things to sensations, to thoughts, to emotions. For it might also be said that a thing is that which we emotionally experience, such as what we love or hate. To say that things are what we love or hate is just as valid from the logical point of view as to say that things are what we feel or think. Why are emotions worse than sight, hearing or imagination? Both are equally subjective and objective, in the same measure corresponding or not corresponding to the object, in the same measure may or may not have significance, value, correctness, etc. And although in fact things are indeed either liked or disliked, it would nevertheless be a great absurdity to base the very definition of a thing on this. Though things we either love or hate, yet their essence has nothing to do with our love, our hatred, or ourselves. All these are only ways of giving a thing outside of itself, in its other being, but not the thing itself. And it is clear that at first it exists on its own, and then it is felt by someone. And if it does not exist in itself, then what is felt, what, properly speaking, is felt or thought?

If sensation, representation, thinking, feeling, etc., are considered forms of consciousness, then it can be said that the thing or the essence of a thing is in no way determined by its consciousness. Any confusion that may arise here is destroyed by only one simple attitude: in order to be conscious, one must first simply be. Let this precedence of being to consciousness be purely logical, purely abstract; In any case, such an attitude determines once and for all that a thing is not the consciousness of a thing, that to define consciousness does not yet mean to define a thing, that it is necessary to define a thing and its essence independently of the definition of the consciousness of a thing. Consciousness about a thing is a given thing in consciousness, and not the thing itself.