>"Opacity...opaque. The ability of a mirror to reflect is conditioned by
>its opacity. It is a pane(pain) of glass, like a window; but unlike a
>window, it is neither transparent nor translucent. Opacity requires the
>impenetrability of light. In order to see oneself in a mirror of one's own
>making, in order to be self-reflective, there is a fundamental opacity at
>the very core of one's being. It is an opacity that cannot be penetrated
>if one is ever to become self-reflective, to take oneself as an object of
>reflection, of thought, of consideration. This is source of both the agony
>and joy of the human condition....
Wow. That's some deep shit, man. Do people really take this seriously? This is eerily similar to things I wrote in my high-shool journals, which I never published, and which, fortunately, I lost.
>The self and self-reflection is captured in Jean-Paul Sartre's imagery of
>the 'opaque blade." In an early essay, Sartre criticized the Cartesian
>philosophical tradition which maintained that it was quite possible to know
>oneself, to penetrate the interior of one's self through transcendent
>self-reflection in which one comes to fully know oneself. For Sartre, such
>a self has no reason for being for it would "be a sort of center of
>opacity...This superfluous "I" would be a hindrance. It would tear
>consciousness from itself; it would divide the self like an opaque blade."
And then Sartre turned 23 years of age.
Eric Beck