appearances
Across the depth-psychology corpus, ‘Appearance’ occupies a contested and philosophically charged position that refuses reduction to mere surface or illusion. The term operates on at least three distinct registers. First, in the phenomenological tradition — Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Thompson — appearance is distinguished from ‘mere appearance’ and aligned with showing-forth: the thing disclosing itself as it is, rather than masking a hidden reality. Thompson’s engagement with Searle sharpens this into a thesis about consciousness itself: consciousness ‘consists in the appearances themselves,’ making the appearance/reality distinction inapplicable at the epistemic base. Second, in Jungian and post-Jungian thought — Jung, Hillman, von Franz — appearance is redeemed from epistemological suspicion and granted ontological weight. Jung argues that the unconscious when unrealized casts a ‘false appearance’ over objects through projection, but that stripping this away promotes truth; Hillman, drawing on Portmann, goes further by insisting appearance is its own purpose and a foundational characteristic of being alive. Third, aesthetic and ethological dimensions run through Hillman, McGilchrist, and Auerbach, linking appearance to self-display, individuality, and figural meaning. The critical tension across all positions is whether appearance conceals or constitutes reality — a question that organises the entire conceptual field.
Portmann insisted that ‘appearance, like experience, is a basic characteristic of being alive.’ All living things are urged to present themselves, display themselves, to show ostentatio… ‘Appearance is the result of a very specific structure of the plasma; it is its own purpose.’
Hillman, via Portmann, elevates appearance from secondary quality to ontological ground, arguing that self-display is intrinsic to life itself rather than serving any ulterior function.
, Animal Presences, 2008thesis
In the case of consciousness, however, we cannot make this appearance/reality distinction because ‘consciousness consists in the appearances themselves’… ‘the point of the reduction would be lost if we tried to carve off the appearance and simply defined consciousness in terms of the underlying physical reality’.
Thompson deploys Searle’s argument that consciousness cannot be reduced beyond its appearances, then extends this to claim consciousness holds a transcendental, not merely trivial, status.
, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, 2007thesis
the unconscious, when not realized, is ever at work casting a false glamour over everything, a false appearance: it appears to us always on objects, because everything unconscious is projected. Hence, when we can apprehend the unconscious as such, we strip away the false appearance from objects.
Jung identifies unconscious projection as the mechanism producing false appearance, and argues that psychological realization — making the unconscious conscious — is the method for restoring truth to perception.
, Psychological Types, 1921thesis
In spite of the fact that ‘appearing’ is never a showing-itself in the sense of ‘phenomenon’, appearing is possible only by reason of a showing-itself of something.
Heidegger distinguishes appearance from phenomenon: appearing is always dependent upon an underlying showing-forth, a structural relation that prevents conflating symptom with disclosure.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
Form as shaping principle and form as visible shape are co-relative, but not identical. The essential reality of one’s image is more like an angel or a daimon, not empirical, not measurable, not visible, only imaginable.
Hillman argues that visible appearance and essential character are related but irreducible to one another, with the deepest reality of the face remaining invisible and imaginal rather than empirically capturable.
, The Force of Character: And the Lasting Life, 1999supporting
their appearance in the other world is a fulfillment of their appearance on earth, their earthly appearance a figure of their appearance in the other world… figure and fulfillment — although the one ‘signifies’ the other — have a significance which is not incompatible with their being real.
Auerbach’s figural reading of Dante holds that earthly appearance retains historical concreteness as prefiguration, resisting allegorical dissolution and preserving appearance as a mode of real, not merely symbolic, signification.
, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, 1953supporting
A thing has in the first place its size and its shape throughout variations of perspective which are merely apparent. We do not attribute these appearances to the object itself, but regard them as an accidental feature of our relations with it.
Merleau-Ponty examines how perceptual constancy separates accidental perspectival appearances from the stable properties attributed to the thing itself, grounding the phenomenon in the lived body’s relationship to the world.
, Phenomenology of Perception, 1962supporting
mere appearance can take the place of judgement… Assent is withdrawn from the appearance that things are bad, or that reaction is appropriate. But the anger or embarrassment lingers a while, until the very appearance ceases.
Sorabji argues against Chrysippus that mere appearance — without full cognitive assent — is sufficient to generate and sustain emotional responses, undermining the strict Stoic identification of emotion with rational judgment.
, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000supporting
pleasant and unpleasant sensations for the Stoics consist in the appearance as good or bad of bodily functions, an appearance which does not require the mind’s assent.
In Stoic psychology, bodily appearances of good or bad are distinguished from full emotional judgments precisely because they bypass rational assent, locating a sub-cognitive layer of affective appearance.
, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000supporting
he gets from opposition between what reason indicates and how things appear through the senses to opposition between beliefs. Which parts of the soul do these opposite beliefs belong to? And is it reasonable to think that the sensory appearances Socrates has in mind are or involve beliefs?
Lorenz traces Plato’s use of sensory appearance as a vehicle for conflicting belief-states within a partitioned soul, positioning appearance at the intersection of perception and judgment.
, The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle, 2006supporting
Around AD 300, however, a fundamental change took place in the depiction of the face. Portraits in stone begin to show a ‘peculiarly abstract’, distant gaze… ‘the features suddenly stiffen in an expressive Medusa-like mask’.
McGilchrist reads the historical shift from individualized to rigidly schematic facial representation as evidence of a hemispheric change, in which the living particularity of appearance gives way to abstract, decontextualized form.
, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009supporting
The relatively sudden change that came over the portrayal of the human face in the period beginning in the sixth century BC… in which the more abstracted, stereotypic and inexpressive gaze… gives way to portraiture which is more individualised, varied, emotionally expressive and empathic.
McGilchrist attributes the historical evolution of facial portraiture from schematic to expressive appearance to advances in right-hemisphere functioning, linking aesthetic appearance to neurological and psychological development.
, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009aside
my body, which through my habits ensures my insertion into the human world, does so only by projecting me in the first place into a natural world which can always be discerned underlying the other, as the canvas underlies the picture and makes it appear unsubstantial.
Merleau-Ponty figures the natural world as the substratum beneath cultural appearance, with the body as the mediating term that simultaneously grounds and renders porous the boundary between what appears and what underlies it.
, Phenomenology of Perception, 1962aside