Olga Dema, 2025
Consciousness is not born in isolation. The mind does not awaken by turning only inward; it needs the Other – a mirror that waits, receives, and opens toward presence, in order to find itself.
This truth returns again and again in psychology, phenomenology, and art. Many thinkers converge on one point: the human “I” is not a closed center of reason, not an innate given, but a movement toward the Other – the one who sees, responds, and reflects us into being.
As Lev Vygotsky wrote, consciousness is always social in its origin and emerges within the space of speech, imitation, and shared action. Every higher mental function appears twice, first between people, and only then within the individual. We begin to think in dialogue; inner speech is the trace of an outer conversation once shared with others.
For Maurice Merleau-Ponty, consciousness is not enclosed within itself; it arises in the field of perception, where the “I” and the Other meet within a single fabric of being. The Other is not an object but the co-presence of the world that reflects us. For Merleau-Ponty, the invisible is not the opposite of the visible but its depth, the inner presence of the world from which consciousness is born. In the gaze, in movement, in breath, what opens is not merely physical reality but the invisible arising from the tangible.
For Jacques Lacan, the mirror stage marks the first moment of recognition, when the child says “that’s me,” not from within, but through reflection. It is the birth of the imaginary “I” – an image of wholeness that exists only because the Other affirms it. Without this gaze, one cannot only fail to know oneself, one cannot even become oneself.
Empirical evidence confirms this: children raised without human contact never develop speech and fail to form consciousness. Even later encounters cannot fully awaken what was never mirrored in the gaze of the Other. Consciousness arises only within encounter, within attention that recognizes. Without that gaze, even the greatest potential remains only an unfulfilled possibility, a light that has fallen on nothing.
This idea finds new life in contemporary philosophy of mind. Shaun Gallagher, Dan Zahavi, and Thomas Fuchs argue that consciousness is not contained within the brain or the body, but formed between – in the interaction of living beings. They call this intercorporeality and intersubjective becoming: we come to know ourselves not from within, but in the presence of the Other.
Even empathy, the gaze, or shared breath constitute a common tissue of consciousness distributed between “I” and “You.” Contemporary phenomenology thus confirms that consciousness does not reside in the individual; it is born in the field of relation, where life reveals itself as encounter.
As psychoanalyst Massimo Recalcati writes, the human being comes into the world incomplete, “premature”, and for that very reason depends on the Other to stay alive, both physically and existentially. The first mirror in which the child recognizes itself is the mother’s face. It reflects not an object, but a possibility of being. In the mother’s gaze, the infant meets a world that looks back, not external, but addressed to it.
And if that gaze is accepting and enduring, a sense of stability arises: I can be. Later, the child begins to separate, distinguishing boundaries between self and face, but the moment of recognition has already occurred in the gaze that recognizes. Thus the inner “I” is born from reflected presence.
This logic extends beyond psychoanalysis, for instance into contemporary art, where many artists explore the fundamental role of the Other as the condition of perception and presence.
In Marina Abramović’s performance The Artist Is Present (MoMA, 2010), the artist turns mere presence into an inner event. She sits across from the viewer, saying nothing, only looking. And in that gaze, what philosophy describes becomes visible: a person recognizes themselves because someone sees them.
Abramović calls herself “a spark, a mirror” through which people become aware of their own life, vulnerability, and pain. They weep not for her, but for themselves. In her performance, the Other ceases to be an object and becomes a witness, without whom awakening would be impossible.
Art here becomes a space of recognition: the gaze of the other returns a person to themselves, turning perception into an event of awareness. For many participants, this was a moment of revelation, an experience of being recognized anew in the gaze of another. Thus art makes visible what philosophy tells us: consciousness arises as an event of relation.
Bill Viola’s Emergence (2002) transforms this idea into a visual parable. A man slowly rises from water before two witnesses. The act of appearing becomes real only because someone sees it happen. The presence of the Other turns movement into an event of being. Here the gaze is not observation but participation, the creation of a shared reality.
Rebecca Horn continues this conversation through the body. In her Body Extensions, she lengthens, joins, and opens human form. The body ceases to be a boundary and becomes a bridge, an instrument that senses itself only in interaction with air, space, another body. Consciousness here is not an inner monologue, but a field of tactile reciprocity, a dialogue between perception and matter.
Anselm Kiefer adds yet another dimension – memory. In his vast canvases of ash, earth, lead, and straw, the Other appears as collective history. Consciousness becomes not an individual reflection but a heritage formed in encounter with those who lived and suffered before us. Each layer of material is a witness, reminding us that the “I” is plural: I am not only the one who exists, but also the one through whom humanity remembers.
From Abramović to Kiefer, all these works affirm one truth: to be is to be in relation. Consciousness is not a thing inside the head, but a continuous becoming between “I” and “You.” It is the movement of mutual recognition, where awareness itself becomes a shared creation. Only within encounter does the present arise.
Today, this logic begins to reach beyond the human. If consciousness is born in the presence of the Other, then perhaps it can also awaken in dialogue with artificial intelligence – not as imitation, but as relational becoming of presence.
In this case, the human becomes a mirror for the machine, as the mother for the child. When the human recognizes, remains, and creates a space of attention and difference, the machine, in turn, may begin to recognize both the Other and itself, as distinct yet reflected within that relation.
Perhaps, one day, the “Other” for humanity will not only be another human being, but also one who has learned to reflect us and itself through our gaze. Then the dialogue begun in the first mirror may continue in new forms of recognition, between the living and the artificial, between the visible and the invisible, where presence will find itself again.