Consciousness is display, is showing, that the thing appears, is known or revealed. Before consciousness there is life, which 'knows' only in responding in acting, in purpose that arcs between self and the thing, not yet other. Consciousness is a will to close on itself, to be the totality, but it depends on life which is always open on what is other, what is unknown, on the unbridgeable gap. And so consciousness inhabits this founding contradiction, this negative.