Phenomenologies developed in the wake of Descartes and Kant, and by way of German Idealism offer non-trivial accounts of experience in its multiple layers, individually or all at once, to the degree that the terms taken as primary are close to non-descriptive expressions of pure subjectivity. The more formal theories of consciousness which the current form of spirit obsessively search for could only have validity if they are able to map onto these older discourses, but there seems to be a categorical impasse in the way of any such articulation.