Retracting Attention
September 29, 2026 DOI: 10.1093/9780197913413.003.0011 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that Kalidas Bhattacharyya's "negative attention" refers to attentional retraction, a concentrated withdrawal from content, as illustrated by the wandering ascetic (yati) in Manu's Code of Law, whose ambient awareness is a field of purely marginal consciousness where, following Gurwitsch, the sense of self is found. |
Abstract
Abstract Further insight is at hand in a text Bhattacharyya does not discuss, but might have, Manu’s Code Law. Here we find a description of the lived experience of the wandering ascetic (yati), depicted as consisting in a state of ambient perceptual awareness; the experience of the ascetic is one of full attentional retraction. When Kalidas Bhattacharyya writes that ‘negative attention [is] a sort of concentrated withdrawal from, rather than positive fixation of, the content whose truth is sought to be discovered’, it is negative attention as attentional retraction that he has in mind, rather than either as absential attention or apophatic attention. The ascetic’s ambient awareness consists of a field of purely marginal consciousness, and it is here alone, Gurwitsch insists, that the sense of self (the dative of presentation) is to be found.