On the Refractive Conception of Consciousness in Clarisse Coignet’s Moral Ontology
In the obscure corridors of nineteenth-century French philosophical thought, one occasionally stumbles upon figures of resplendent peculiarity whose conceptions, though neglected by posterity, strike profound chords of metaphysical depth. One such figure is Clarisse Coignet (1823–1918), a philosopher whose theory of moral autonomy and latent ontology deserves far greater scrutiny than customarily accorded. This article shall endeavor to illuminate a subtle yet significant detail in Coignet’s work: her implicit refractive model of consciousness, a notion entangled within her broader ethical metaphysics but scarcely acknowledged even by those few scholars who have dipped a cursory toe into her oeuvre.
Coignet’s principal work, *La Liberté morale* (1860), has often been interpreted narrowly as a treatise on moral education and secular ethics. However, such a construal fails to appreciate the metaphysical architecture lying insidiously beneath the didactic surface. Indeed, Coignet proposes — often obliquely — that consciousness is not a self-identical medium of reflection, but rather a refractive prism through which the moral law, a noumenal intonation echoing from the depths of the self, must travel in order to become knowable to finite intelligence. This stands in stark contrast to the dominant Kantian view of her contemporaries, which posited the moral law as immediately perceptible through pure practical reason.
The critical paragraph relating to this view occurs early in *La Liberté morale*, where Coignet disclaims the popular notion of “conscience immédiate” and instead speaks of “le travail intérieur de la liberté comme une lumière réfractée par l’être personnel.”¹ Herein lies the pregnant metaphor: human consciousness does not resemble a transparent window to universal moral law; it is rather a particular medium, which refracts — bends and colors — the otherwise pure and undifferentiated impulse of moral obligation according to the peculiar densities and compositions of the individual self.
An immediate implication of this metaphoric framework is that moral insight is inevitably idiosyncratic. Even universal principles become variegated upon exposure to individual consciousness. Thus, Coignet subtly undermines the Kantian insistence on the universality of the moral law as self-evidently apprehensible by all rational agents. For her, universality exists primarily at the level of the source, not at the level of perception: pure Noumenon is refracted diversely across the myriad-consciousnesses it penetrates.
This deviation bears enormous significance, especially when considered in the broader context of nineteenth-century debates concerning subjectivity and objectivity, and the implications for moral philosophy. If each consciousness refracts moral truth differently, this entails that true autonomy — Coignet’s central ethical concern — must involve an incessant struggle to purify one’s refractive medium. It is not enough to obey the moral law passively; one must engage in a laborious clarifying of the internal glass, to approximate transparency without ever fully achieving it. True freedom, therefore, is the progressive diminishment of refractive distortion: an ideal never realized, but compelling endless inner refinement.
Some commentators might hastily accuse Coignet of indulging a proto-relativistic posture, thus sapping moral universality of its authoritative rigor. Such a charge would, however, misinterpret the delicacy of her position. Coignet is no relativist. Rather, she understands that the relation between the individual self and the universal law is mediated, and that human finitude necessitates an ongoing moral self-cultivation whereby one’s refractive distortions are systematically lessened. The law remains universal; it is consciousness that is variegated and flawed. In this, Coignet perhaps prefigures certain aspects of later existential phenomenology, wherein the emphasis shifts from an abstract moral ideal to the situatedness of moral perception.²
Moreover, this model elegantly resolves certain aporias haunting Kantian ethics, particularly the puzzling phenomenon of persistent moral disagreement among rational beings. If the moral law were immediately perceptible to reason, whence comes the stubborn divergence of ethical judgments not merely among the ignorant but among the sagacious? Coignet’s refractive model supplies a plausible answer: the divergence is not a refutation of the existence or universality of the law, but the natural consequence of the diversity of refractive consciousnesses through which the moral impulse must pass.
In metaphysical terms, then, consciousness for Coignet is a diaphanous yet flawed crystal, uniquely warped in every individual by the sedimentations of history, personality, emotion, and intellect. The moral task is not merely obedience but self-purification — a slow rescue of the self from itself for the sake of approaching, ever asymptotically, the pure light of freedom unmixed.
One may observe that Coignet’s refractive model subtly transforms the very notion of moral error. In strict Kantian terms, error implies culpable misuse of reason. In Coignet’s schema, error may instead signify an inevitable byproduct of the opacity immanent to finite consciousness. While culpability remains — for it is the duty of each to attempt purification — error is rendered tragically inevitable rather than merely blameworthy. Thus, humility and patience become cardinal virtues in her moral universe, not ancillary ones.
Furthermore, one notes the inexorable implications of this model for pedagogy, a subject dear to Coignet. If each consciousness refracts differently, then moral education cannot proceed through mere imposition of rules; it must involve careful cultivation of the peculiar opacity of each soul. It suggests an untenable arrogance in demanding uniform behaviors from diversely composed beings, and instead points toward a more delicate, individualized art of ethical awakening. In this, Coignet anticipates educational theories that would only fully blossom in the twentieth century.³
It is a peculiar melancholy that such an intricate and visionary metaphysical conception should linger in near-oblivion, overshadowed by the grander names of her male contemporaries. Yet in Coignet’s refractive model of consciousness, one perceives a nascent revolution: the ethical life is neither mere obedience nor nihilistic whim, but an endless striving toward the reclaiming of self-transparency, a penitent arc toward lost clarity under the fallen conditions of human consciousness.
Thus, in the luminous obscurity of Clarisse Coignet’s writings, there lies buried a metaphysical diamond whose facets await the attentive gaze of latter-day philosophers. Her work demands not mere citation, but rediscovery; not casual footnote, but vigorous engagement.
—
¹ Clarisse Coignet, *La Liberté morale* (Paris: Hachette, 1860), p. 32.
² See Simone de Beauvoir, *The Ethics of Ambiguity* (1947), where the situatedness of freedom is elaborated with an existential inflection.
³ John Dewey’s emphasis on experiential learning can be seen as an American echo, albeit unacknowledged, of similarly individualized moral pedagogy.
By Martijn Benders – Philosophy Dep. of the Moonmoth Monestarium
moral autonomy, refractive consciousness, 19th-century metaphysics, Clarisse Coignet, ethics, phenomenology, subjectivity