Gesture, Act, Consciousness : The Social Interpretation of the Self in George Herbert Mead

This essay focuses on George H. Mead’s analysis of consciousness. Mead, father of the social psychology and outstanding pragmatist thinker, particularly investigated the social origin of consciousness and conceived the latter, in a Darwinian way, as an outcome of communication process. In his opinion, that process begins with a “conversation of gestures.” It is the gesture (first of all the vocal gesture) that enables the reciprocal adjustments between different individual organisms. Moreover, gestures are pure responses, and there is no need to postulate the existence of states of consciousness acting beyond and before the expressive gestures (as Wundt or Darwin stated). The crucial datum in psychology is the act, not the individual trait, and the act is a complex ‘organic’ process, socially rooted. The act is never exerted singularly, but demands a shared and publicly recognized practice. From the idea of “taking the role of the other” to the Generalized Other and the notion of Game, I shall follow Mead’s account of consciousness and discuss his radical reconstruction of this important topic of contemporary philosophy.