”Finite players play
within boundaries; infinite players play with boundaries.”—James P. Carse, “Finite and Infinite Games,” p.
10.
The critique of Positivistic ideology is complex and technical, but it can be introduced as a relatively clearer critique of Solipsism. Solipsism can be a “presentation concept” to frame this discussion for critiquing science and technology. One cannot logically and consistently accept—or reject for that matter-- Positivism as the paradigm of scientific objectivity, and then reject a critique of Positivism as too abstract because these abstractions are already contained in Positivism’s methodology.
The critique of solipsism
was one of Wittgenstein’s goals in writing the Tractatus by showing the
limits of language just as Kant demonstrated the limits of Reason in The
Critique of Pure Reason. For Wittgenstein language is only meaningful when
connected to the world of empirical facts, just as for Kant we can only know
the world of experience through the categorical lens of space and time. Both
philosophers critiqued solipsism as a symptom of overly reductionist
philosophies.
“The solipsist’s predicament is that, when he denies the existence of
everything except himself and the world of his own experiences, he is unable to
point to what it is that, according to him, does not exist, because it lies
outside his world…he is like a man who carefully constructs a clock, and then
attaches the dial to the hour hand so that they both go round together. There
is no contrast with anything outside his world…( Ludwig Wittgenstein by
David Pears, (Penguin),(1970), p.74).”
Wittgenstein in showing the
limits of factual discourse faced the same problem except he cannot say whether
a named object exists or not exist because their names are only names-- the
objects are the meaning of a name. So he faces the same boundary as the
solipsist: he is unable to name objects that do not exist.
“…only certain things
exist, but that they exist is something that cannot be said. It can only be
shown, and the solipsist’s mistake is to express it in a factual proposition….
[The Subject, or observer] is only a metaphysical subject, which is a kind of
focal vanishing point behind the mirror and what the mirror reflects. So the
only thing that he [Wittgenstein] can legitimately say is that what is
reflected in the mirror is reflected in the mirror…but this is…only a
tautology. It means only that whatever objects exist exist. So when solipsism
is worked out, it becomes clear that there is no difference between it and
realism (Ibid., p. 74)."
1. The world is all that is the case.—Wittgenstein (Tractatus)(pdf.)
(∀x)Wx
“For all x, x is the
world.” I think this notation
captures Wittgenstein’s meaning, but this proposition could be stated in
another way just as it could be stated in ordinary language. For example
proposition “1” could be symbolized as (x)(Wx ⊃ Cx). However, the actual
case could also be the “world,” so that the expression could be propositionally
stated as the following:
(x∀)[(Wx ⊃ Cx)] ⊃ (x∀)[(Cx ⊃ Wx)]
“If the world is all that is the case, then what
is the case is the world.”
But is the predicate nominal“W
= is the world,” just another object, or is it a constructed
unity of relations? In other words, the capital letter “W” (the
predicate, or property constant used in Predicate Logic) is being used to
denote both relational and non-relational properties. “All that is the case”
include relations. Wittgenstein said, "Situations can be described but not
given names." (3.144). Therefore, since a relation cannot be named,
it cannot be an object. There are other propositions in the Tractatus
that builds states of affairs from the concepts of Objects, states of affairs,
and facts (2.01-2.0141), see Wittgenstein On
Objects. However, he must have other propositions about states
of affairs and facts because the one proposition “The world is all that is the
case,” is inadequate in itself.
“...the conjunction (conjunctio)
of a manifold in intuition [the many kinds of sense experiences] never
can be given us by the senses; it cannot therefore be contained in the pure
form of sensuous intuition, for it is a spontaneous act of the faculty of
representation [of the self].”—Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 94)(pdf.).
How would the logical expression be written to imply that “the world” is a
constructed unity of relations? The logician would say that the expression “for
all x,” or (x∀) means whatever it can be expanded or quantified to—a very long
conjunction of “ands”, (Wa and Wb) and (Wc and Wd) and (We and Wf), and so on.
This task would only be possible if 1.) There were a finitenumber
of entities in the real universe. 2.) We had a name for every
entity in the real universe. However, the real world has a non-finite
number of entities so such as long conjunctions of “ands” would be impossible
to complete.
Take
for example the proposition “Every Even Number is Divisible
by 2.” Writing out the conjunction would be an endless chain of “ands”
(symbolized with * asterisk), as in the proposition, [(N1 * N2
* N3….) * (E0 * E2 * E4….)]. The universal quantifier (∀x)
“for all x” is necessarily exclusive so that
we can only symbolize the even number proposition as the following:
(∀x)[(Nx *
Ex) ⊃ Dx]
"Every even number
is divisible by two.”
Sometimes symbolic logic is
so minimalist, and so simple that it is difficult to comprehend. A problem of
logical symbolization translates into metaphysics as the problem of solipsism.
The symbols of logic can only operate in a finite world of entities; those
entities that we can name, and yet this is an operationally impossible task due
to computational explosion. What is the name of that which we cannot name?
"Noumenon” from ancient
Greek νοούμενoν means "something that is thought," or "the
object of an act of thought." The shorthand of language and logic excludes
much of what we call the world due to reductionist tendencies of symbolic
systems. Kant names this existential residuum the thing-in-itself,
or Noumenon. Kant is using the term noumenon to
mean that the thing-in-itself cannot be known in principle, and
not as an object yet undiscovered. Solipsism insists that only one’s own
experiences are real, and the appearances, or phenomena represent the whole of
the reality, i.e., of what is the case.
"5.64 Here it can be seen that solipsism, when its implications are
followed out strictly, coincides with pure realism. The self of solipsism
shrinks to a point without extension, and there remains the reality coordinated
with it.
5.641 Thus there really is a
sense in which philosophy can talk about the self in a non-psychological way.
What brings the self into philosophy is the fact that 'the world is my world'.
The philosophical self is not the human being, not the human body, or the human
soul, with which psychology deals, but rather the metaphysical subject, the
limit of the world--not a part of it (Tractatus)."
This constellation of sixty five essays have at some point or another touched on many of the philosophical issues discussed by Chomsky in the newly posted video below.
I found another very interesting new video dialogue between Dr. Veveake, Dr. James Carse, at the Stoa hosted by Peter Limberg. I am reading Dr. Carse's book "Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility,"(1986) and must say it is a very, very good example of dialectical reasoning joined with phenomenological description. I would place myself on the infinite game player team!
An Existentialist
Interpretation of the Last Scene of Fellini’s Film, “La
Dolce Vita,” (“The Sweet Life”)(1960)
“It’s a
monster! It’s been dead for three days!”—Partygoers shout after
discovering a giant bloated stingray fish on a beach.
The dead stingray represents spiritual death, nihilism,
alienation, and the state of falleness of a particular state of human
consciousness. There are other terms of this mode of human existence the
Existentialist philosophers use to describe this shape of consciousness such as
the “they,” or “Das Man,” (The ‘averageman’) and as “inauthentic
existence.” All these words attempt to name a form of personal consciousness that
is not “owned” by itself, but lacking self-responsibility while
self-deceptively seeking refuge from the anxious uncertainty characteristic of
human freedom in its struggle for complete self-actualization. All of these
phenomenological concepts are very abstract and material examples, which this
film provides, are very helpful for giving them intelligible content. “Phenomenology”
is the science of appearances, or φαινόμενον, the Greek term for “phenomenon”
meaning to bring to light, make to appear, to show, combined withλόγος, ”logos” of which one of its meanings is study “ofthe subject,” as in “anthrop-ology.”
I have written about Heidegger’s philosophy before in a more
formal way in the essay, “Dasein
Analytic.” Writing about authentic and unauthentic Being requires a
different kind of thinking that is richly expressive, which can put living
flesh back onto these abstract reductionist concepts that attempt to illuminate
the essential structures of human existence. Fellini’s film makes this kind of
analysis much easier, fun, and even more relevant.
The film’s main character, Marcello Rubini, is
a writer for Italian gossip magazines during the 1960s and is gradually pulled
into, but also attracted to, the “sweet life” (“dolce vita”) of wealthy
high society circles in Rome. This being one of Fellini’s most famous films, La
Dolce Vita, is divided into seven episodes each tracing Marcello’s
desperate effort to escape himself ending in the last scene on an Italian beach
where he is on the verge of having insight into his own existence. Marcello
represents a necessary and essential existential stage of human ‘mind,’
or ‘spirit’ (the German term ‘Geist’ has both meanings) that
suffers from the anxiety of human existence. In an effort to escape, he
embraces pleasure as an end in itself. Hegel quotes Goethe’s play “Faust”
to describe this individualistic hedonistic consciousness aimed at fulfillment
of desire as its only purpose in the Phenomenology of Spirit (paragraph
360):
“Instead of the seemingly heavenly spirit of the
universality of knowing and doing in which the feeling and the gratification of
singular individuality fall silent, the spirit of the earth has entered into
it, a spirit to whom the only being which counts as the true actuality is that
of the actuality of singular consciousness.
It despises intellect and science
Man’s highest gifts –
It has given itself over to the devil,
And must perish”
A stingray is sometimes called a devil fish. For Heidegger, the
character of Marcello would epitomize the average man, or the public “they” of
all other human beings. In, Being and Time (1927)(pdf.),
Heidegger wrote, “The ‘they’ has its own ways in which to be. That tendency… is grounded
in the fact that Being-with-one-another concerns itself as such with
averageness, which is an existential characteristic of the ‘they’ (Being and
Time, p.164).” Heidegger’s phenomenological analysis of consciousness characterized
this hedonistic mind—the spirit of the earth--as the
self that allows the average-everydayness of an anonymous public “they” to
prescribe “…one's state-of-mind, and determines what
and how one 'sees' (Ibid., p. 213).” The concept of “seeing”
plays an essential part of the person given over to endless hedonistic search
for pleasure in the forms of spectacle, and novelty to achieve some sense of a substantial
life; a world in which the subject (person) takes for granted they belong and are
freely a part of that world.
Curiosity, Looking, and
Seeing of the “They”
“Even at an early date (and
in Greek philosophy this was no accident) cognition was conceived in terms of
the 'desire to see’.”--(Being and Time, p. 214)
Heidegger uses other words
for special kinds of sight or seeing using his clever etymological kinship
studies such as 'Umsicht' meaning “circumspection” for example (Ibid.,
p.159, Footnote 3). Sight (‘Sicht’) is the ability to see, or vision. On
the other hand, seeing (‘Sehen’) is the ability to comprehend,
recognize, and understand what is seen. In the English language, sight without
seeing can mean, “looking” as when one says, “I am looking for the
beacon, but do not see it!” or “I saw him, but did not recognize my old
friend.”
These distinctions are
important for understanding the particular way that the hedonistic self
continually seeks seeing, but without comprehension. This particular “I”
consciousness relates itself to the world in a mode of Being called
“curiosity.” Heidegger describes this comportment of inauthentic human
existence:
“The basic state of sight
shows itself in a
peculiar tendency-of-Being which belongs to everydayness-the tendency towards
'seeing'. We designate this tendency by the term "curiosity"
[Neugier], which characteristically is not confined to seeing, but expresses the
tendency towards a peculiar way of letting the world be encountered by us in perception (Ibid., p. 214).”
Historically, science is
understood as having its genesis in the desire to see, but within inauthentic
Being consciousness distracts itself from the issues of its own existential
meaning. Seeing is a release from anxiety for inauthentic Being, but it fails
to have understanding and comprehension for the person is only seeking sensation,
or merely engaged in voyeurism. Voyeurism is one way consciousness abandons the world by
superficially embracing the world.
“When curiosity has become
free, however, it concerns itself with seeing, not in order to understand what
is seen (that is, to come into a Being towards it) but just
in order
to see. It seeks novelty only in order to leap from it anew to another novelty.
In this kind of seeing, that which is an issue for care does not lie in
grasping something and being knowingly in the truth; it lies rather in its
possibilities of abandoning itself to the world (Ibid., p. 216).”
This kind of seeing is only
one form of an idolatry of perception; another being natural-scientific reductionist
empiricism in which perception is assumed to be immaculate, or received as purely objective without
acknowledging the shaping influence the grasp of consciousness has on our experience.
This school of empiricism then attempts to use its credentials as science to
become a philosophy of life leading to the violation of human values with
disastrous consequences.
One film reviewer summed up the character of Marcello as "detached." I used the term "alienation" to describe him, but Marcello is too detached to be alienated. All of the characters in the movie are ghosts, including two murdered children, in the sense they have an exterior appearance mirroring an internal struggle for spiritual meaning, for a substantial life, for a happy life.
In this mode of Being
existence is “ambiguous” making it “…impossible to decide what is disclosed in
a genuine understanding, and what is not (Ibid., p. 217)." Ambiguity
is the inability of the self to distinguish between the authentic and
unauthentic, between the substantial and unsubstantial in one’s own life,
Others, and the world. Ambiguity is ignorance that signifies modal confusion.
Like the dead devil fish monster on the beach, Marcello can look, but he cannot
see.
Chatter
and Idle talk
Heidegger describes as
inauthentic the hedonistic individual consciousness oriented toward pleasure,
superficial seeing; insincere averageness lacking depth; and
endless curiosity that divides itself into infinite individual moments
in which the fractured self loses its identity. These attributes are named “existentials,”
and refer exclusively to the essential structures of human existence, and not to
objects. Heidegger adds yet another existential,” named, “chatter”
as a particular degenerated form of human discourse that has no understanding,
and is just “Idle talk” based on conventional uncritical opinions functioning
as yet another escape mechanism to avoid thinking, risk, and responsibility.
Chatter filibusters any real commitment to a meaningful life such as this
gossip columnist’s endlessly journey skipping from disconnected media event to
media event:
“Idle talk is the possibility of understanding everything without
previously making the thing one's own. … Idle talk is something which anyone
can rake up; it not only releases one from the task of genuinely understanding,
but develops an undifferentiated kind of intelligibility, for which nothing is
closed off any longer…idle talk discourages any new inquiry and any
disputation, and in a peculiar way suppresses them and holds them back (Ibid.,
p. 213)."
The
Second, “Second Coming”
"The waking have one common world,
but the sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own (idios
kosmos)." "Hearing they
do not understand, like the deaf. Of them does the saying bear witness:
'present, they are absent.’ “--Heraclitus
For the Greek word “idios,”
the term “idiot” is formed to mean a private “individual,” and “kosmos”
meaning “cosmos” or “world.”
Marcello and his party crowd stumble out of a
beach house after enduring a boring night-long half-hearted orgy—I just hate
those! They spill out into the beach parking lot and hear men calling out in
surprise as they pull a giant string ray fish onto the shore. One fisherman
suggested to the exhausted orgy partiers the fish could be sold for a large
profit. This last scene’s “Second Coming” of the Devil Fish is as sarcastic as
the first scene’s return
of Jesus as archaic symbolism.
At first, the party mistake the stingray dragged
up in the fishermen’s net as being alive, but the fishermen knew it had been
dead for three days. Dead for three days: Lent fasting is during the six weeks
before Easter, after the Carnival orgy. This
moment carries for Marcello only the possibility of insight into authentic
existence: an Either/Or moment of existential decision.
Marcello displays utter disgust and contempt for
the alien creature which in turn encourages the others to mock the rotting
inhuman corpse with its eyes wide open staring at the crowd; without any
empathy, a smirking Marcello takes great pleasure speaking for the crowd
declaring, “And it insists on looking.” Marcello is smirking at himself while
summing up his own spiritually dead meaningless life.
The
hedonistic nihilist mode of Being, “…experiences the double meaning
implicit in what it did, viz. when it took hold of life and possessed it; but
in doing so it really laid hold of death.”--Phenomenology of Spirit,
paragraph, 363.
The hung-over and exhausted
Marcello wanders to the side of the crowd, and as he sits down on the beach, he
hears a voice calling; a voice in the distance across an estuary where a river
divides the beach and pours out into the open ocean. But Marcello is unable to
hear the young girl, or understand what she is trying to say to him as the ocean
waves drown out her voice.
For Marcello the “…pleasure
enjoyed has indeed the positive significance that self-consciousness has become
objective to itself, but equally it has the negative one of having
reduced itself to a moment…its experience is of a contradiction in which the
attained reality of its individuality sees itself destroyed by the negative
essence confronting it, which is devoid of reality and content, and which yet
is the power which destroys it…the poorest form of self-realizing Spirit….(Ibid.,
para: 363).”
Marcello is kneeling on the
beach facing the angelic young girl as she calls out to him. He does not
recognize her as the young waitress named Paola he encountered in a seaside
restaurant days earlier. Marcello was working on a book while Paola hummed
along with the jukebox. Marcello told Paola she reminded him of an angel in an
Umbrian painting. Painter Raphael is the most famous
painter of the High Renaissance Umbrian School of Art. “Paola” (Pow-la) is
the Italian and Spanish feminine form of the name “Paul” which in this
context has a religious meaning pointing to the appearance of Christ
symbolizing the Substantial Life.
Scientific and
unscientific symbolism shares a common ground in a wonderful synthesis of
thought and existence, of Being and consciousness. The two different elements
of Language that bears the power of logic, and Mythic-Symbols are
unified by metaphor (Language and Myth, Ernst Cassirer, 1948). However,
for Marcello all symbolism has lost meaning having been reduced to curious
isolated images, and odd trinkets unable to point beyond themselves to truth:
without truth, Marcello has no possibility of freedom. This is not a tautology.
A person is not truly free if rational decisions of choice cannot be made by
independent knowledge. Marcello’s consciousness makes it impossible for him to
achieve any Great Awakening.
Marcello suffers forgetfulness,
of a sense of loss, and the sense of having a debt outstanding. He is on the
spiritually dead side of the mythological river of λήθη (Lethe) meaning “forgetfulness,” or “oblivion.” The
souls entering the mythic Underworld of Hades drank from the river Lathe to
forget they were dead. The letter ἀ is a negative
prefix, or alpha privative.
The Greek word for "Truth" is ἀληθείᾳ (a-lethea) that means the negation of forgetting,
or “remembering.”
According to Johannine
Christology the Logos has a face. Marcello is unable to recognize a substantial
life even as it is disclosed to him as the face of the Other.
Parody only reinforces the
Holy. This film was understandably criticized by the Vatican, and unfortunately banned in many states for parodying the second coming of Jesus; but below
the surface of cultural symbolic imagery the film is actually very religious in
its attempt to reach for a spiritual dimension in a negative way; however, it
may not have been intended by the film makers. The first words for
religion must be words against religion the Christian Theologian, Paul
Tillich, counseled religious thinkers.
Husserlian
Phenomenology: The Possibility of the Science of Essences
For an in-depth and technical explanation of Edumond’s Husserl’s
phenomenological methodology, see Dr. Mark Thorsby’slectures.
Thorsby goes through Husserl's introduction to phenomenology in "Ideas"
(pdf)
section by section. In "Ideas " (section, 19, or
pdf., p. 29) Husserl gives a powerful critique of naturalistic empirical
positivistic methodology and its assumptions (Naturalistic
Misinterpretations video @ 11 min. 43). He presents a good
summary to the different types of phenomenologies.
I have attended course lectures by Phenomenologist, Dr. Jitendra Mohanty, on Husserl’s critique of psychologism and the epistemological problems of naturalistic scientific empiricism. Dr. Thorsby gives an excellent lecture on this fundamental issue underlying all cognitive science, logic, and mathematics (Part II). Also, he teaches a complete symbolic logic course in another series of free videos on his channel.
Phenomenology is the most radical form of empiricism for it describes the living stream of experience in meaning-reality; however, no pure phenomenological description is possible.
Mark Thorsby: Part I on Phenomenology: Types of phenomenology. The Encyclopedia of Phenomenology (Kluwer
Academic Publishers, 1997) features separate articles on the following seven
types of phenomenology.
1. Transcendental Constitutive Phenomenology: studies how objects are constituted in pure or transcendental consciousness.
2. Naturalistic Constitutive Phenomenology: how consciousness takes in the world of nature.
3. Existential Phenomenology: studies concrete human existence.
4. Generative Historicist Phenomenology: studies how meaning is generated in historical processes of collective experience over time.
5. Genetic Phenomenology: studies the genesis of meanings of things.
6. Hermeneutic Phenomenology: studies interpretive structures of experience.
7. Realistic Phenomenology: studies the structure of consciousness, assuming a real world.
Appendix B2
Don’t forget about the Good Professor, Dr. John Vervaeke! I
watch all of his videos. His monthly Question and Answer session for April,
17, 2020 is particularly good because it succinctly contains much of the
content of his lectures and discussions during the last few months.
Each video lecture gets clearer and more concise on the
themes of idolatrous objectification, self -deception, consciousness, paradigm
entropy, the Logos, phenomenological existentialism, Kairos, Wisdom,
dialectical meaning epistemology, Being Modes, and Mythic-Poetic thinking.
I go crazy with excitement whenever he mentions Paul Tillich because
his systematic theology unifies all those philosophical methodologies that we
have been studying. Dr. Vervaeke incorporates the methodologies of Dialectics
(Heteronomy vs. Autonomy), Critical Science (Kantian Criticism), and
phenomenology (Heidegger, Tillich) in his scientific studies that require clear
expression and terms. The professor's working vocabulary reminds me of the
careful use of language by Husserl in his 1913 book introducing phenomenology, Ideas
(pdf).
Appendix B3 Dr. Cornel West On Being A Revolutionary Christian April 23, 2020
Appendix B4
The Philosopher’s Stone
Dr. John Vervaeke discusses Carl Jung with cognitive
scientists and practicing psychotherapist Anderson Todd who also teaches
courses at the University of Toronto.
Todd demonstrates the use of all three methodologies of
dialectical reasoning, critical philosophy, and phenomenology while discussing
Jung and other philosophers. In addition, he integrates historical empirical
research of past proto-cognitive science and classic philosophy. In other
words, Anderson Todd is way ahead working on rich philosophical grounds.
I first encountered
this concept of synchronicity in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel Crime and
Punishment as ‘coincidence,’ and never seriously researched the concept
further. Todd has an insightful and plausible interpretation of synchronicity.
Synchronicity could also be understood as an experience
of paradigmatic induction: the formation, or re-enforcing, or a
weakening re-interpretation (thus inducted) of an ontological paradigm. Reason always demands coherence and completeness. A
‘coincidence’ is remembered and highly selective, but not meaningless. Coincidence can be a metaphor for transcendence. Is this a paradigmatic circularityany rational person can escape?
Also, I wondered why Isaac Newton spent many years
experimenting with alchemy: he was not a gold speculator, but searching for
something more valuable—the philosopher’s stone
and the elixir of life. Rarely, is this side of Newton discussed. The alchemist
is experimentally applying the categories of reason (Spirit) to matter, and
attempting the reverse.
I am still holding on to the concept of telos, as “ethical
telos,” or the “telos for the divine
double,” seeking relevance realization, and transformative experience,
which is compatible with historical telos, but not the Cold War trope of
deterministic historical teleology.
Appendix B5
The Book People
That ending scene from
Fahrenheit 451 is so frightening, and so beautiful.
Eventually, I will link up
each appendix to a specific topic in this strange collection of essays. And I
wrote them: you can see all the spelling errors as evidence!
Contemporary books on
phenomenology are expensive, and so most of my studies focus on primary
sources, free online libraries, and my own small book collection. I have found
YouTube’s online lecture series freely contributed by scholars, universities
(St. John’s College Nottingham, NYC Union Theological Seminary,
Goethe-Institute), and philosophers to be very good quality.
There are online lectures on
Husserl, and Heidegger given by some of the scholar mentioned already in the
other appendixes: Dr. John Veraeke, Dr. Gregory B. Sadler (I finally made it to Lordship
and Bondage in Phenomenology of Spirit), Dr. Mark Thorsby (also goes
to primary texts of Husserl and Heidegger with expert commentary), and Dr.
Johannes A. Niederhauser.
Since contemporary books on
Heidegger are so expensive, and I don’t read the German language, my knowledge
of the later Heidegger is relatively weak. Dr. Johannes A. Niederhauser insightfully speaks in the language of the later Heidegger and is particularly
helpful explaining his further philosophical development.
Heidegger’s complete writings are massive in volume.
Lecturer Eric Sean Nelson,
formerly at University of Massachusetts Lowell before locating to China, gives
a lecture on the later Heidegger and his studies of non-Western religions. Paul
Tillich also was doing the same type of exploration of other religions during
the 1950s meeting with Daisetz Suzuki and Shin’ichi Hisamatsu to discuss
Japanese Buddhism in New York and Kyoto, Japan at various times (Cambridge
Companion to Paul Tillich, p. 254)(pdf).
The later Heidegger thought philosophy should be replaced by discourse. The Ancient Greeks had no word for language, but instead used the term "διάλογ-ος “ meaning “dialogue,” “conversation,” “debate,” or “argument.”
Philosopher Hannah Arendt was alive when phenomenology became a philosophical school of thought, and commented that it was “a time when talking became alive.” I think I know what she meant.
This lecture by Eric S.
Nelson ends at 54 minutes, but the question answer period is excellent also.
Husserl and Heidegger:
Phenomenology, Eurocentrism, and Buddhism
"The smallest
thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a
habit of muttering to yourself -- anything that carried with it the suggestion
of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper
expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for
example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in
Newspeak: facecrime, it was called."—George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty
Four, Chap. 5
The moral of the film is complete self-deception destroys
the concept of Truth itself.
This very literary story was first written by John Cheever
as a short story appearing in the The New Yorker magazine in 1964.
“The Swimmer” is about self-deception in American society
during the heyday of capitalist growth and the extreme optimism that
characterized the American mind. This frame of mind, or the shape of consciousness,
in this era of suburban expansion and post-War II domination of the world
economy was the Neo-liberal free market ideology beginning to emerge as
unquestioned conventional knowledge.
We can see today’s corporate culture, which I have
experienced, as motivational positive thinking pop psychology to manipulate
people into conformity and to enforce ideological harmony masked by a cheerful
fake veneer. This unrealistic optimism is strongly pointed out in the film.
However, this consciousness is complete self-deception and delusion. Corporate
positive psychology instills a false enthusiasm and happy conformity that
denies truth itself not unlike Chinese Maoist revolutionary joyful extremists. Notice the excessive smiling of the characters which we see in North Korea. Excessive smiling has even become a syndrome for some Japanese businessmen. Face crimes are serious in authoritarian environments. Ned Merrill, the movie’s
protagonist, is a wealthy, middle-aged advertising man trying to “swim” to his
home in suburban Connecticut by skipping to his wealthy neighbors’ swimming
pools along the way while ignoring the truth exposing his delusions and unconscious lies with his
socialite friends, and ultimately with the film viewers. Ned lives a life of complete contradiction. Listen carefully to the dialogue as the truth will sometimes slip out. The dead in the Underworld would drink from the mythological river Lethe in order to forget they were dead.
In ancient Greek, λήθη
(Lethe) means “forgetfulness,” or “oblivion.” Those that drank from the river
Lethe would become oblivious to their true state of Being. The letter ἀ is a negative
prefix, or alpha privative. The Greek word for
"Truth" is ἀληθείᾳ (alethea)
meaning the negation of forgetting, or knowledge is remembrance (early Plato).
Most people have heard of Hegel’s famous “Thesis,
Antithesis, Synthesis” dialectical tirade of thought and historical change, but
what is often not mentioned is that the suffering of self-delusion, or illusion
of consciousness struggling with itself. This agony and spiritual internal violence is a central concept of Hegel’s historical account of the
evolution of consciousness in time. Because of these internal contradictions Ned is unconsciously forced to seek unity in his fragmented life by swimming in each of his neighbor’s pools until reaching home. His journey isn’t a river as he images for rivers are a unified whole.The swimming pool is the human conception of nature’s Walden pond
except that 99.99 percent of impurities are filtered away. Self-deception is
easy to embrace because of our desires, but a difficult state of mind to
escape. Both Ned, and the film viewers will reach what is known in Hegel’s
thought as emerging self-consciousness at the end of Ned’s journey of untruth
to truth.
Ned first appears in the
film walking alone in a forest nearly naked, only wearing a bathing suit. Is he
Adam exiting the Garden alone as post-lapsarian man?Or is Ned the free Rousseauan “state of nature” good human being that
transforms into an impostor by life’s shaping internal and external forces?
This analysis could be developed further.
This is not a true story, but as myth it is the truest story.
I chose “The Swimmer” for review because of the current pandemic,
but also this film as been interpreted by some as a critique of “postmodernism”
which it clearly is not, but rather about the individualist social paradigm in
American capitalist society.Some of the
postmodern interpretations make many of the same conceptual errors and fallacies identified in my last
polemical essay titled, “The
Ayn Randian Propagandistic Trope Concerning Postmodernism.”
I discovered a wonderful new philosopher, Johannes Achill Niederhauser PhD, appearing from the North through the lectures of Dr. John Vervaeke.Both philosophers deliver very high quality talks in their fields of study and interest.
Also, Dr. Vervaeke will soon have a video series on Socrates.
Notice that Dr. Niederhauser reads Heraclitus out loud in the original Greek! My goodness! Johannes has many more videos on his channel "Classical Philosophy" that are incredibly insightful.
Christopher Lynn Hedges (born September 18, 1956) is an American journalist, Presbyterian minister, and visiting Princeton
University lecturer. In 2001, Hedges
contributed to The New York Times staff entry that received
the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for the paper's coverage of global terrorism. He
also received the Amnesty International Global
Award for Human Rights Journalism in 2002. He has taught at Columbia
University, New York University, the University of Toronto and Princeton University, where he is a visiting lecturer in African
American studies. And Hedges has taught college credit courses for several
years in New Jersey prisons. (Wikipedia: Chris Hedges)
In the spirit of Friedrich Schleiermacher, Rev. Chris Hedges
gave the following sermon in Victoria BC on January 20, 2019.
Appendix A3
Paul Tillich could be viewed
as representing the religious wing of the Frankfurt School of Critical
Research. Tillich was never an official member of the Frankfurt School,
however, he knew Max Horkheimer as both a fellow professor at the University of
Frankfurt, and the director of the Frankfurt School of Critical Research.
Tillich once dedicated the essay "Participation and Knowledge: Problems
of an Ontology of Cognition” to Max Horkheimer's sixtieth birthday in 1955.
Also, Professor Tillich knew
the young Theodor Adorno as his student while acting as adviser for his
habilitation (a written thesis), which the University of Frankfurt accepted.
The approved habilitation gave Adorno permission to lecture. Eventually, all
three scholars had to immigrate to the US as German exiles during the 1930’s as
the Nazis took power.
Paul Tillich, Theodor
Adorno, and Max Horkheimer wrote about the same concerns of the modern age
using the same methodologies of dialectical reasoning, critical theory, and
phenomenology. All foresaw the dangers of instrumental rationality, systems of
domination, existential alienation, repressive reified social concepts,
objectification of human beings, and nihilism. Tillich formulated and applied metalogic
(a reconfiguration of dialectical analysis, critique, and phenomenology) as his
methodology to examine these modern afflictions in both the religious realm
(heteronomy), and secular culture (autonomy). Adorno demanded everyone keep
their feet on the ground of existence, and not fly off into pure metaphysical
speculation. Horkheimer was more of a mediator between the two other
philosophers.
As a religious socialist,
Tillich worked to keep Christianity relevant to persons in modern industrial
society by reinterpreting its symbols of meaning, and categories. For Tillich
culture is directed to “conditioned forms,” while religion is directedness to
“Unconditional meaning,”(Schelling).
Tillich writes,"...culture is a form of expression of
religion, and religion is the substance of culture" (Tillich, What is
Religion?, p. 73)(pdf). On the other hand, “....culture in
substance is religious, even though it is not so by intention, (ibid.,p.
97).
In both cases the religious and cultural unintentionally display
common essential elements that seek fulfillment in a complete unity of meaning
within the “living stream of meaning reality.”
"...every religious act is... a cultural act; it is
directed toward the totality of meaning. But it is not by intention cultural;
for it does not have in mind the totality of meaning…. In the cultural act,
therefore, the religious is substantial; in the religious act the cultural is
formal”(ibid.,p. 59).
I studied some of the
Youtube video lectures about Paul Tillich, and selected this one by Russell Re
Manning as one of the best overviews. Part I of II.
Appendix A4
I want to provide some background for the two videos on the Frankfurt School.
By the way, the Frankfurt School is often referred to as "Culture Marxism," a popular old Cold War trope. And, it is true that the Frankfurt School is about Marxism for sure, but what they do not tell you is the Frankfurt School is also about Christian theology--they lied to us again, but we're used to it. Marxism has had more impact on Western Christian theology, than on Western economic theory--and it has only been 170 years. After reading something written by Paul Tillich, I feel...free.
Some Frankfurt School members fled fascist Germany, and while in exile
attempted to understand how fascism emerged out of a Capitalist society by
researching German society.
1.) The Frankfurt School scholars extended ideological critique to social
psychology. The psychology of the individual is an important agent in the rise
of fascism. They did the first studies on the authoritarian personality and
family structures (which turns out to be a key source of fascism).
2.) The Frankfurt School explained the self-reinforcing qualities of
Capitalist social infra-structure and the process of power legitimation.
Our practical reason (ethical reasoning) is used to achieve freedom, but
instead evolves into “Instrumental Reason,” (technology) to the point that
there is an “Eclipse of
Reason.” The Enlightenment has been replaced by positivism to reinforce
Capitalism. The tendency of instrumental reason is to dominate both human
beings and nature by a systemic internal process sustained by social
organizations. Instrumental reason has redefined the meaning of human existence.
Now “surplus repression” is necessary to exploit and maintain the flow of
surplus value.
3.) The Frankfurt philosophers rethought the concept of the “Negative,” (the
possible) as opposed to the “Positive”(the actual). Marcuse reformulated a
method for critical negative dialectics, or the dialectics of imagination for
possibilities by borrowing concepts from a.) Freud, the b.) Existentialists,
c.) Heidegger’s fundamental ontology, d.) Hegel’s concept of
"negation" and “determinate negation.”
Adorno contributed his
“Negative Dialectics”(1966) to re-define and refine a critical dialectical
methodology (imminent critique) to derive contradictions from systems of
concepts, and paradigms. The genetic influence of Hegelian Absolute Idealism in
Marxism allows the critical theorists to shift the analysis from
its historical emphasis of Marxist’s so called materialism --a Positivistic
dialectic of actual existence--to a Negative dialectic of essences and
possibility.
4.) Habermas attempted to bring a new hermeneutic, or principles of interpreting political theory. Capitalism has changed modern
"politics" from the Greek “polis” of participation and attempts to
reclaim communication from a distorted reality, and Orwellian contradictions.
I touched on many of these themes in this strange book of
mine, but the two part video series on “Adorno and Horkheimer: Dialectic of
Enlightenment, Part I”
more clearly brings them all together. Part II is
particularly well done.
Appendix A5
Critical Negative Thinking as the Logic of Protest and the Impoverishment of Experience
“… the
"inner" dimension of the mind in which opposition to the status quo
can take root is whittled down. The loss of this dimension, in which the power
of negative thinking--the critical power of Reason--is at home, is the
ideological counterpart to the very material process in which advanced
industrial society silences and reconciles the opposition” (One-Dimenisonal Man, Herbert Marcuse,
Beacon,1964, p.13)(pdf).
Negative critical thinking
is possibility thinking, of what could exist as opposed to what actually
exists (positive). Critical thinking is often viewed as “utopian” thinking (οὐ, no; τόπος,
place) especially when scientific empirical positivism is the dominant
paradigm that de-realizes, discourage, and de-legitimizes this dimension of the
cogitative inner self (Geist). The logic of domination (instrumental
logic) results in the constriction of human experience—in the poverty of
experience. This sublimated inner-dimension is where spiritual experience
abides.
”The world of immediate experience-the world
in which we find ourselves living-must be comprehended, transformed, even
subverted in order to become that which it really is.
In the equation Reason =
Truth = Reality, which joins the subjective and objective world into one
antagonistic unity, Reason is the subversive power, the “power of the negative”
that establishes, as theoretical and practical Reason, the truth for men and things
— that is, the conditions in which men and things become what they really are”(ibid.,
p.85).
When
we critically examine the appearances (phenomena) in the living stream of
meaning-reality, they fade away into a cloud of quantum haze.
In
spite of our “struggle against…absorption into the predominant
one-dimensionality,” the universe is open.
I only mentioned that to say
philosopher Dr. Gregory B. Sadler has a free online YouTube
paragraph-by-paragraph reading course of Hegel’s entire “The Phenomenology of Spirit”! Dr. Sadler is at paragraph
644 now! I’m trying to catch up by watching one lecture a day. It’s unbelievable! Be sure to not miss his future lectures starting at paragraph 672 on Art, Religion, and Philosophy. This section on religion is where Paul Tillich learned systematic Christian theology!
Dr. Sadler delivers very
clear commentary and interpretation—clearer than Hegel, for sure. I learned an
awful lot from these marathon expert lectures and have
already link to one of his insightful videos in one of my essays quoting Hegel.
Dr. Hudson explains why
Christians hate Jesus so much.
Sociologist Jim Vrettos
interviews Professor Michael Hudson, Economist, Wall St. Analyst, Political
Consultant, Commentator and Journalist; who offers his views in the way finance
works and how debt is actually a tool for oppression.
Dr. Hudson has written many
books including:
Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American
Empire (1972)
Urbanization and Land Ownership in the Ancient Near East (1999)
Killing the Host (2015)
J is For Junk Economics: A Guide to Reality in an Age of
Deception (2017)
...and Forgive Them Their Debts: Lending, Foreclosure
and Redemption from Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year (2018)
Appendix A8
"Despair is suffering without
meaning"-Victor Frankl
(∀x)[Dx ⊃ (Sx * ~Mx)]
“The
secret of Kant’s philosophy is the unthinkability of despair.”--Theodor Adorno
It is as if Dr. Frankl gave this interview yesterday. Frankl
knew his chances of surviving the Nazi Death Camps were statistically 1 in 29.
Victor Frankl: Finding meaning in difficult times.
