Category Archives: Philosophy

Fun with Math – NOT

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Professor Loy writes about the Diamond Sutra and the logic form utilized by the teaching as:

A is not A, therefore it is A

So, “Purity is not purity; that is why it is purity.”

This is transformative as we come back to purity with a different approach as a result of the process.

This has a striking similarity to Hegel’s aufheben – sublation from thesis and antithesis.

It also makes me think of integration in Calculus:

A is not A, therefore it is C where C is equal to (I have to write this out without mathematical symbols due to limitations of text):

…the integral from minus infinity to plus infinity of A AND Not A (or A – A)

In math, the result would be zero or cancel each other out. For Hegel, the cancelation keeps or holds the terms vis-a-vis lifting them up, synthesis (transformation of the integral).

So, for all instances (or dynamics of) the master AND Not Master (or Slave), the successful integration results in full self-consciousness (or the dissolution of subject-object in social acceptance of authority and responsibility). The master and slave find their freedom only in their positive acceptance of their dependence.

In calculus differentiation takes us in the opposite direction from, in Hegelian terms, the synthesis to thesis and antithesis. Of course, not all functions have known solutions and some converge to a limit and some diverge towards plus or negative infinity. I guess in Hegel sometimes the master and slave kill each other and synthesis is never obtained. I suppose some bone head could work out the calculus of Hegel for their doctoral dissertation but…

I think I prefer Zen. Hegel gives me a headache.

An Analysis of Necromancy

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In the post on Necromancy, Necromancy – When We Dance with death, I tried to illustrate some arm chair thinking I have been doing on psychology. Since I am not a paid sophist with a vested interest in defending a particular point of view I can play a little.

I think that the external and the internal may be somewhat artificial designations. Sure valid distinctions may be drawn but the question may always be posed regarding the hermeneutics and canonization of certain historical ways of thinking on such matters.

In the interest of play:

It seems to me that in light of galactic black holes and sub-atomic, black holes that pop in and out of existence there may also be, at least metaphorically, psychological black holes. Black holes in physics are severe space time distortions that defy our current understanding of the universe. Physicists use the term “singularity” to describe the phenomenon. They also use this term to describe the state of the Big Bang before the bang. In physics a singularity is a mathematical failure and generally speaking, highly undesirable for new theories. Black holes defy our imagination and put us into question.

I think certain extreme traumas may also create physiological black holes. The death of a mother, a bad LSD trip, a lost love, Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, etc. can be the mechanism for their genesis. The immediate results are not the consumption of stars and planets but the consumption of what I have called “Soul”. The consumption dominates and errodes our childlike capacity with the five stages of dying:

1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

These symptoms have a cyclical effect. They tend to be obsessive and highly infused with emotion. Just as all matter is drawn into orbit around the vortex of a black hole – symbols, projections, and erratic emotions are cyclically drawn into the psychological black hole. The brain was designed by evolution to solve problems but these types of traumas are unsolvable. The brain recoils on itself and a whole litany of deep rooted emotions seem to be enmeshed in the trauma.

At the event horizon of a black hole everything including light is inescapably drawn into a black hole. I take this as Freud’s Mystic Writing Pad – the unconscious. Light cannot illuminate the unconscious by definition. For psychology, we only see its effects in behavior like the trenches made on the writing pad after lifting the plastic (consciousness) has concealed the initial trauma. When the trauma becomes unconscious it can take on a kind of life on its own. It can come out in dreams and un-expectant emotions years later. Yet it is undecided whether or not therapy can ever resolve the dilemma. It can allow one to live more peacefully beside the condition but the perforation and psychological scar may be permanent.

I think that from a more philosophical point of view it may be that these psychological black holes are perforations of infinity. They defy our best theories and best attempts to shed light on them. They gain a kind of independence from the spotlight of consciousness. Perhaps this makes possible the human capacity for reflection, awareness of death and finitude. I have just started reading David Loy’s book on “NonDuality” but, for now, perhaps the possibility for duality is rooted in the fact the humans can be unconscious of themselves and yet peripherally aware of the absolute split in their being. The Other, the radical disjuncture, the diachrony that Emmanuel Levinas writes of may also have an essential component within our own psyche.

I would also add that I do not think the traumas I am thinking about are common and numerous as some neurotics would have it. I think that the frailty of the human psyche may only be able to deal with a few of these such traumas before the possibility of soul, of residing in “hobbit-land” are diminished and human behavior gets more and more like the randomness of an act of nature, a tornado. Perhaps criminal behavior and Republican, fundamentalist Christians can be explained with such an analysis (;-).

In any case I think it is possible that our “experience” of God or the radical alterity of the Other may acquire an ally in our own fragmented and de-severed mode of being in the world. I would be hesitant to reduce God or the Other to the human psyche because that philosophically bites off too much but I do think that the windows through which we gaze into the infinite may be none other than the black hole of the psyche.

Heidegger and Buddhism

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Check out this article:

http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-MISC/91932.htm

The title is “What’s Wrong with Being and Time: A Buddhist Critique” By David Loy

Not only does it elucidate Heidegger but it also points out and contrasts Heidegger’s philosophy with Buddhism.
Here are a few tidbits that occurred to me while reading it:

As one gets older a certain kind of “inorganic” deflation of one’s illusions overtakes experience. The notions of youthful ambition such as wealth, passion/love – the heroic in this article, lose their force. The “Will to Power” is dispersed and the past as construct is not reconstituted but deconstituted – deconstructed. In occidental culture age and wisdom have been relegated to the non-consequential. Youth and illusion are brought to the fore and age is content-emptying. However, no refutation need be made to reinvigorate age – age brings its own possibilities. It opens by allowing illusion to age, to lose impact and therefore, its insanity.

The desperation of meaning-assertion becomes unraveled and space/rest/repose creep into our historical narratives. Emptiness, sunyata, is not a threat but a companion, a “me” when I am not “me”. In this way, a certain kind of authentic experience is not forced by dread or heroic effort but shows itself as the distance in narrative, the release/letting go of self and of neurotic, obsessive, drive to be. A certain kind of peace, not framed (or undergirded by enframing) but more like breathing out is organically brought to experience and the “inorganic” is merely a byproduct of the prolonged death of youth.

I suppose the critique of these thoughts could be pressed into this analysis by suggesting the old simply give themselves over to everydayness or in Freudian terms the unconscious. However, this seems to me to revive the youthful illusion of polarities, good/bad, differentiation/repression, etc. Being-towards-death or the death wish contrast as authenticity or dispersion. Does “Will to Power” age? Is authenticity the heroic possibility or passivity? Is death about the possibility for authenticity or about realizing what one always was? – Or both…

I think there are hints in this article and in Buddhism of a kind of utopist view of extinction. Realization ushers in a kind of non-articulated paradise. This may not be accurate but I think the allusions to such an experience of realization may create more problems than it solves. In the oriental tradition of Buddhism, a whole collection of Hindu theologies (reincarnation, karma, higher/lower worlds, demons, superstitions, etc.) have crept into Buddhism. Contrarily, Siddhartha Gautama started Buddhism to get away from the “metaphysics” of Hinduism. Buddhists commonly state that they are not a religion but a practice which implies that no theologies need be stated or accepted.

Why We Still Sacrifice Our Young

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Barbaric ancient cultures ritually sacrificed their young to appease the gods. In the remoteness of those behaviors we cloak our own ritual instincts to sacrifice our youth. First, let me say that my own personal perspective on this has been shaped by first-hand experience of the Vietnam War that effectively destroyed both of my older brother’s lives. I am fascinated with how we sabotage ourselves in our truths and guarantee that our nemesis will once again rule the day. How do we sacrifice our young?

Watching Vice-president Biden yesterday talk about love of country in the heroic sacrifice of our warriors enraged me. The mistakes of President Obama’s predecessors have been blessed and sanctified in his administration’s current support of the Afghanistan war. These mistakes are no longer thought in terms of Bush administration tragedies but the old mantle of “defending freedom” has once again been cast over the irrevocable tragedy of state sanctioned killing of our youth. In Vietnam, the thought of a tragic mistake was the elephant in the room that our rhetoric always had to maneuver itself against. Just as the Catholic Church has never officially acknowledged that the earth is round but killed it with centuries of rhetorical hubris, the tragic sacrifice of our young in Iraq and now Afghanistan, started by Bush’s admitted mistake in Iraq, has been rhetorically redeemed into a “defense of freedom”, a “heroic sacrifice for the survival of our country”. The very same politicians that propagate these tragedies are the ones that gush their priestly, sanctimonious justifications for why these sacrifices had to be.

The truth, the elephant would speak if we let it, is that we blundered into nation building and forcing our values on cultures that at best have ambivalent judgments about our occupation and at worst fuel the fires of the holy war against the great satin (us). Our politicians tell us all the theological edicts that sanction our violence by a loving god and a country that stands for unquestionable truth. We lure our young into the military with commercials that play on their heroic fantasies and need for a job. They naively enter a machine that dashes their youthful ideals and deposits them in an alien culture with weapons and a mantra of kill or be killed. Families are torn apart and destroyed for generations. “Collateral damage” is the name for the rhetorical elephant that kills hundreds of thousands of women, children and “non combatants”. Many veterans that return find they must justify themselves and get locked into war hawkish justifications for future conflicts. They find conservative, Republican ideology as their life-long companion. The church ensures its future and brainwashing propagates into its young. The business of war is sealed in a tomb of sanctimonious rhetoric.

We could never admit that we have wasted our children’s youth and futures on a lie. That would rob our false god of its fire and fury. We would have to live in the shadows of Mordor, the dole drums of the under-world, the loss of meaning, the emptiness of nihilism. Nihilism is the result of the bankruptcy of our truths, our metaphysics, and our reasons for being. The chasm of our underside is opened by the radical belief in our holiness. The negative fascination of our truths stares into the void and the void stares back into our truths. We must continually feed the dragon or it will eat us. The gods must be appeased and our youth are our sacrificial lambs.

I have written elsewhere (http://mixermuse.com/blog/2010/01/08/war-on-terrorism/) on this blog how I think criminal situations could be dealt with that are propagated and fueled where no law exists, both best case and worst case, without playing these psychological-sociological games on ourselves so I will not re-state how we could deal with Iraq and Afghanistan in a saner, rational and targeted approach. In this essay, I simply want to expose how we symbolically and symbiotically feed on ourselves by a lack of philosophical, critical reflection. Folks, if our gods could save us from ourselves they would have centuries ago. The truth is, as Nietzsche prophesized, is that our good and evil is hopelessly enmeshed in a historically destructive dance that can only be compared to an act of god, an non-human tornado, a thirst that can never be quenched but will drink itself into oblivion on the sands of the desert. Will the United States be remembered thousands of years from now as a step away from humankind’s barbaric past or just another historical example of an Egypt or Rome that lost itself in its own dizzy heights and crashed into yet another heap of historical ash? All the while there are those of us that live in the shadows of death of our loved ones while the politicians blather on about our virtues and continue to tragically and mistakenly feed the beast.

Phileo-Musings

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For those interested in Heidegger:

“on” (Greek) – particle gerundive sense (to-be-in-being: sein) and a substantive sense (that which-is-in-being: das Seiende).
“non” (Greek) – trans. presence, “now moment” use; now
“aon” (Greek) – trans. age, use; eon

ti to on – What is being?

“being” is temporal not a thing (semblance) but from arche (origin, principle)

To think being as a thing is to think being as present, a thing as (substance or better ousai)

“ousai (feminine present participle of to be) of on” (being of Being) – incorrectly translated “substance” of being
“Physics” is perspective on, and circumspection within, being as a whole; yet its view to the arche always sets the standard (Nietzsche By Martin Heidegger, Volume 2, pg 189)

Metaphysics is the question and founding of the arche of physics. It is the grounding question of physics.
Yet, Metaphysics languishes in its abject universality, its pure emptiness. It always plays with its nemesis nothingness.
Can Metaphysics be thought as Descartes notion of infinity? It always overflows itself yet, of necessity, must retreat into ambiguity, the NOT of nothingness. For Metaphysics to-be it must historically result in nihilism. It can never appear, be present, give an account of itself. Thus, the unconscious of Freud, the other of Levinas, the NOT of Hegel are all diminished forms of Metaphysics. It determines and retreats and thus opens the space of human being, the event of appropriation. Truth, aletheia, as showing itself as it is can only be what it is because of semblance, covering over. The present can only appear and make appear because of not-appearing, exceeding and diminishing; thus, appropriation.

Just some recent reflections…

Some other classical Greek words:

*Hyle. Aristotle’s word for “prime matter.” Translated by Thomas Aquinas as material prima. Aristotle’s concept arose out of a critique of Anaximander’s notion of apeiron.

*Morphe. Aristotle’s term for form. In Aristotle’s Metaphysics there is a duality between hyle as prime matter and morph‘ as that which forms this matter into the sensible things of the world. Latin translation: forma.

*Apeiron. Anaximander’s concept of the first material or prime matter. Literally translated it means the “unlimited.”

*Logos. The Greek term for “reason” for “giving an account” (Plato). The verb lego both to speak and to put together. Thus Plato’s emphasis is on the living dialogue as the only context for the unveiling of logos. Socrates claims that the logos speaks through him in the Platonic dialogues. The Latin translation is ratio, and this had led to a more strict use of reason in the confines of mathematics, science and logic. For much more click here.

*Sophia. Wisdom. Becomes an intellectual virtue in Aristotle, as contrasted with phron‘sis the intellectual virtue that makes the good life possible. Last stem of our word “philosophy.” Used in a derogatory way in naming the Sophists, those pretending to be wise.

Phronesis. Generally used to describe practical knowledge.

Pragmata. Objects seen in terms of practice and not theoretical investigation.

*Episteme. For Plato knowledge that has been derived by justifying an opinion with an argument (logos). Hence the Platonic formula doxa + logos = episteme.

*Kosmos. Order, form, fashion, rule, regulation, or regulator. The world or universe according to its perfect order or arrangement. Non-philosophical use in Alexandrian Greek as known or discovered world.

*On = being. Onta = beings. Root for our word ontology.

*Kosmos Noetos. Plato’s real (transcendental) world of forms.

*Eidos (plural eide). The Greek word Plato used to designate his “forms.”

*Eidon. Image. The images of the sensible world, the poor, inexact copies of the perfect eid‘.

*Kosmos Aisthetos. The sensible world for Plato.

*Aisthesis. Sensation, the sensible. Translated into Latin as sensatio.

*Nous, Noesis. Intellect to intellection. Translated into Latin as intellectio. Anaxagoras’ cosmic mind.

*Philo, Philein. Love of and to love. First stem of philosophy.

*Physis. Trans. As natura in Latin. Basic meaning in Greek much more living and active than what we term as physical nature today. Physis could be better translated as creativity or creative coming forth according to a certain logos. Aristotle called the pre-Socratics “physicists” (physikoi).

*Psyche. The soul. First stem of our psychology with logos at the end.

*Atoma. Indivisible. Democritus concept of the basic units of the world.

Energeia. Aristotle’s concept of act or actuality.

Dynamis. The power in things. Aristotle’s concept of potentiality.

*Homo mensura. (Latin). Man is the measure. Protogoras’ theory of epistemological relativism.

Chorismos. Ontological gap between world of forms and world of appearance.

*Ouk on vs. me on. Absolute non-being vs. relative non-being. First mentioned in Parmenides but there is no consistent distinction until the German theologian Paul Tillich defined them as absolute and relative in the first volume of his famous Systematic Theology.

*Dialektike. See essay at this link.

Eros. Love, usually now in terms of passion as in our erotic love vs. Platonic love.

Hypodoche. Plato’s word for the primal stuff or receptacle which is equiprimordial with the perfect forms. According to the Timeaus, the Demiurge (the artisan or creator) impresses the forms on this stuff and the sensible world of appearance (kosmos aisth‘tos) is the result. Aristotle uses his own hyl‘ as a replacement for the Platonic hypodoch‘.

Hypokeimenon. Aristotle’s substance or substratum that which persists throughout all change. Translated as subiectum by medieval philosophers. The original meaning is corrupted in modern post-Cartesian subjectivism but is retained in our subject as a subject of research or investigation or our subjects in school. Click here for the full hypokeimenon story.

*Aporia. No way out, nothingness, or the impenetrable. It is something which is not porous which cannot leak. The interlocutors in the early Platonic dialogues cannot get out of the dead-ends into which Socrates leads them. They are in aporia; hence, the locution “aporetic” dialogues, the early dialogues where there seems to be no positive result.

Ergon. A finished work, as opposed to energeia the work in process, the actuality of the work.

*Axios. Value or worth; hence, our word axiology, theory of value in ethics and political philosophy.

*Nomos. Law, custom, convention. Nomos was referred to as divine law in Heraclitus, the Sophists thought that nomos was only conventional. Our word, antinomians to indicate revolutionary sects like the Gnostics or the Anabaptists who took seriously the idea of going beyond the law as a way of spiritual redemption.

*Hedone. Pleasure, hence our term hedonism.

*Theos. God hence our “theology” or “theophany” the revelation of theos because the “phany” stems from the Greek phainos, to come to light. Ontophany is the revelation of being. Phenomenology is the logos of phenomena, those things that appear.

*Heiros. The sacred, hence our “hierophany,” the revelation of the sacred.

Agathon. The Good in Plato’s republic, which is not identified with the theos. This is the Form above all the Forms.

*Arche. The first, or first principle (s).

*Gnosis. Knowledge, hence agnostics, not-knowing, and our word “agnostic.”

*Deontos. Law, hence “deontological” ethics, strictly non-utilitarian with strict adherence to the law in all situations.

*Doxa. Opinion, the quasi-knowledge we obtain from the sensible world as opposed to the true knowledge that we get from the realm of Forms.

*Monas. Unit, the one. Hence, Leibniz’s “monads” and the “monadology.”

Polis. Originally meant fort or citadel and then came to mean the Greek city states. Out terms “politics” of course stems from this root.

*Telos. End, purpose, or goal. Hence our “teleological” ethics, utilitarian ethics that urges actions according to their end and purpose.

Dike. Law or justice, as in the opposites having to pay for their coming out of Anaximander’s apeiron.

Aletheia. Unveiling, uncovering. The Greek notion of truth. The German philosopher Martin Heidegger maintains that we ought to return to this concept of truth rather than the modern “correspondence” or “coherence” theories of truth.

Elenchos. Scrutiny, refutation, interrogation. Socrates method in aporetic dialogues.

Entelecheia. Lit., “having a telos inside.” It is the essence of anything and allows t

Sophrosyne. Usually translated as “temperance,” but it literally means “moral sanity,” i.e., a personal stability and integrity that comes from the harmony of the appetites, passions, and reason.

Dianoia. For Plato the type of cognition that stands between doxa and noesis. It is that faculty that allows the mind to connection mathematical forms to geometrical and numerical figures in the world of appearance.

Aletheia. The Greek word for truth as the uncovering (lit. meaning) or coming forth of a thing’s essence.

Anamnesis. The Greek word used to indicate Plato’s theory of recollection.

Arete. Most generally anything “functioning excellence”; most specifically as phronesis operating to develop the virtues, viz., human functional excellence.

Daimon. Lit. “spirit,” good, evil, or indifferent. For Socrates it meant his “conscience,” the voice within that told me not to do certain actions.

Demiourgos. The creator god of the Timaeus who takes the Forms and impresses them on a primordial stuff (hypodoche) to produce the world of appeance.

Diairesis. The Platonic method of division found in the Phaedrus and the Sophist.

Eudaimonia. Lit. “having a good spirit,” usually translated as “happiness,” but more accurately “contentment” or “well being.”

Theoria. For Aristotle the activity of nous that requires a logos, viz., a truth that is demonstrated. As opposed to nous as phronesis that does not require demonstration. These practical truths are lived rather than demonstrated.

Megalopsychia. Lit. “great souled,” most often translated as “pride,” the virtue of knowing one’s own worth without falling into the deficient of humility or the excess of boastfullness.

Ousia. Aristotle’s basic words for substance or fundamental being.

Epoche. Pyrrho’s term for suspension of belief.

Ataraxia. Pyrrho’s word for a state of “unpeturbedness” or “quietude.” It is the moral and spiritual end of the philosopher’s quest.

The Absolute Necessity of Rhetoric

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In President Obama’s recent trip to Afghanistan he told the troops that he would not send troops anywhere that was not “absolutely necessary” (http://frontpagemag.com/2009/10/27/mission-abandoned-%e2%80%93-by-alan-w-dowd/).  When President Bush started the war in Afghanistan he justified it as a crusade, vengeance for 911, a Texas style hanging for Al-Qaida and killing the ones responsible for 911.  I never heard him state that he was going to bring the terrorists responsible for 911 to justice.  He may have made that statement but most of the statements were along the line previously described.  Using these rhetorical ploys Bush was able to get the support he needed to start the war in Afghanistan.  Hatred is always a strong emotion while justice is emotionally a bit puny.  Bush started the war against Afghanistan based on rhetoric about getting Al-Qaida.  To date Al-Qaida is still around and our rhetoric about our enemy Al-Qaida is also used freely about the Taliban.  While no one would suggest that the Taliban is a great group of guys, they were not the stated reason why we went to war in Afghanistan.  Fanning the flames of 911, Bush was able to start a war.  His rhetoric became President Obama’s “absolute necessity”. 

I have previously stated that as leader of the United States, President Bush should have stated that we would bring Al-Qaida to justice.  Preferably, this would be done through the United Nations, the World Court and pressure from the World Monetary Fund (in Afghanistan and Pakistan).  President Bush’s rhetoric should have made justice the guiding principle.  We would have kept the sympathies of the world and made justice the value that everyone, no matter what their political persuasion, sympathetic to the universality of justice.  Vengeance and hatred on the other hand are regionally specific.  Those that hate and want vengeance are driven by their own internal necessity not by any universal appeal, by an ideal that everyone could think is worthwhile.  As I have also mentioned in another paper, barring the earnest attempt to get justice in a region of the world where justice is highly lacking, the alternative would be US Special Forces, the CIA, mercenaries, and covert bribes and pressure.  Don’t think it can’t be done; we had a whole cold war based in Afghanistan against the Russians using these techniques many years ago.  However, the political rhetoric should always be concentrated on universal values not regional and circumstantial emotions.

When our hatred drives our rhetoric the rhetoric can take on a life of its own in popular culture.  The switch from admirable, universal ideals to self-aggrandizing, raw and base instincts that become yet another mindless iteration of the past; it becomes its own necessity.  The necessity driven by hatred always ends badly.  The necessity driven by high ideals, historically always ends well.  Examples of the latter include the founding fathers, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Jesus, etc.  Unfortunately, the earlier is typically the blunder of humankind.

Since rhetoric based in base instinct got us into Afghanistan, I think President Obama had no other choice but to use rhetoric to get us out of Afghanistan.  It has been done before (Vietnam comes to mind) – we declare victory for x, y, z reasons and get the hell out.  We pursue the cause of bringing Al-Qaida to justice using the previously discussed strategies.  As it is, now we are looking at an endless war that has the tendency to expand as these situations typically do.

Another example of rhetoric gone badly is the recent militant rhetoric used by the Republican Party against the Democrats.  The Republican leaders play on the strong emotions of hatred and violence with inflammatory rhetoric and “wash their hands” of it when their words start taking a life of its own in popular behavior.  If you want to understand how Hitler was able to do what he did you can see the beginnings of it in these kinds of rhetorical ploys. 

While personally, I have never opposed capital punishment in cases where there is “no shadow of doubt” about the defendant’s guilt, I have opposed it based on the rhetorical dynamic described above.  When the necessity of rhetoric is allowed to run rampant Texas style executions become more and more “normal” and statistics about wrongful deaths and ethnic inequalities of the death penalty become more and more prevalent.

President Obama should have held to his higher ideals and not adopted the rhetorical necessity handed to him by the Bush administration. 

On a more philosophical level, the dynamic of rhetorical necessity tells us something about human’s unique way of being-in-the-world.  Our narratives of history become our cannon.  The ill-conceived actions that typically follow continue to create generations of veterans and Republican voters that sanctify our motivations and our histories.  The perceived alternative would be to exist in meaninglessness.  God, the self-evident and the a priori surround us as witnesses to our ultimate worthiness and meaning.  In the margins of our hubris plays the alter-ego, the lie of truth and the future seeds of our own undoing.

What is Not

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Rene Descartes wrote of the unique idea of infinity.  Infinity is a word that we know and use.  Even more, today we would say that calculus is the math of infinities.  Yet, according to Descartes, infinity is a notion that overflows itself.  Of necessity, it is a word that must be what it isn’t.  A word or an idea is finite.  Yet, the idea of infinity is a placeholder for what it cannot be.  It is not like the ostensive definition of a cat.  The word cat points directly to a cat.  The word “infinity” does not point directly to any such “thing” as an object.  However, it is a word that gets its meaning by negating itself not for some mystical reason but for something as real as the mathematics of calculus.

The Greeks were very taken by the geometry of the triangle.  Even more, Plato spoke of the forms, the ideal perfection, the real of everything we see.  Everything we see is murky and shadowy.  We know from Einstein that there is no such thing as a perfect triangle.  Space-time is warped and curved by mass so, while we might imagine a straight line, a straight line does not exist.  The real strait line only exists in concept form.  The real triangle is an ideal form but has never existed.  Yet, we use the idea practically all the time.  It is a concrete ideal or as Hegel might phrase it a concrete universal.

While language is a system of signs, signs are not all made the same.  Some signs have a real, ostensive object like a cat.  Others can only point to something concrete by dismantling themselves, by holding the “not” more closely they point to ideals that never “are” in existence and yet “are” as real, concrete and practical as a cat.  What should be observed is that they are what they are by being what they are not.

Perhaps this could be said of all words and ideas to some degree.  They designate over and against to function.  They instantly define by negating what they are not.  Some words and ideas can function as ambiguities, metaphors, poetry, art, etc.  Similar to infinity they can simultaneously hold various systems of thought, ideas or get reduced to a myriad of words.  Take this poem I wrote a while ago:

Oh wistful night of a million suns.
Spawn dancing shadows from nameless orbs.
Through stellar darkness light years are thrown.
Perchance dark grace our sun or moon
And primal night fire my heart drum.

Oh wistful thoughts of a million souls
Spawn dancing shadows from nameless histories.
Through unconscious darkness years are thrown.
Perchance dark grace our I or other.
And primal projections fire my loves

This poem speaks of a natural phenomenon, an eclipse.  Yet, it also holds with it a primal humanity, an archaic origin.  These are not systems of signs that would normally go together but in the metaphor of poetry that can actually elucidate or bring to presence a “reality” of who we are. 

Words can also be mistakes. We can say that a square is a circle or that A is not A but it is simply wrong to insist on such a thing.  In a more sophisticated fashion we can all freely develop ideals or ideologies in politics, religion, morality, etc. that are simply based on wrong facts.  We can put together ways of thinking that do not belong together.  As in evolution, we can make mistakes that can take on a life of their own.  When Einstein first came out with what we now call relativity more physicists opposed him than agreed with him.  Many thought that the universe Einstein envisioned was a step back to the hocus pocus of the dark ages, a step away from the concreteness of Newton.  Over many decades the doubters became less and the believers increased.  Einstein had a set of facts that he observed keenly that embodied many wrong perceptions (see “Einstein’s Mistakes”) but held together enough of unexplained phenomena that the Newtonian physics could not hold together to provide a more plausible showing of our universe.  The point here is that while language allows us to put together systems of signs that do not go together, that are wrong, not based on “facts”, they can also hold enough of a truth, a cohesion that does hold together to make them plausible.  This does not mean that a square will ever be a circle but in curved space-time it is possible to pick a coordinate system in which an object could be described as a square or a circle.  A cylinder can be sliced as either.  Yet, the idealized concept of a square and a circle will always be fundamentally at odds with each other.  To insist that A is not A is opposite to a tautology, an absolute contradiction.  The idea holds together concepts that are absolutely incompatible.  In its “wrongness” the idea comes to be.  Its “wrongness” is always contingent.  It can only be wrong by proclaiming it, by naming it and what it necessarily entails.  It abstractly “nots” itself while at the same time asserts itself.

In every thought and concept there is a “not”.  The “not” has to be for the word, thought or idea to be.  Any idea must be what it is by announcing what it is not, by suggesting it is this and not that.  This may seem trivial but for Hegel the “not” was always an absolutely necessary operative in every concrete word, concept, idea, reality, etc. – the “not” is always necessarily and unequivocally implied by existence.  Post modern deconstruction might think this as the trace of the knot that always must undo itself, a sort of tangential contingency that is always taken up into our surest notions, the dark side of presence, the banal “not” of existence.  It allows and creates existence.  It is always the “other” that cannot be totalized or brought into a cohesive presence.  It must eternally be relegated to the nether region.  For the light to be, the dark must always be a close ally.  Our finitude and mortality can only be in lieu of infinitude and immortality.  Wrong must be for right to be.   This is a step into Hegel.

Knowing this play of signs destabilizes our absolutes, our forms.  This awareness curves in on itself into an absolute singularity, nonsense, a hermeneutical circle.  It frees us of logic while simultaneously necessitating logic.  Normally, only the ravings of a madman would be attributed to such rants.  Perhaps it is madness but it is a madness that must be for the sane to be.  Foucault spoke if this in “Madness and Civilization”.  There is a irrationality that necessarily plays at the roots of rationality.  It can be “deduced” and has been by philosophers and scientists.  Physicists have known about singularities for centuries.  Yet, a black hole is a singularity.  When they recognize a singularity it causes them to reflect back on their theory.  The mind necessarily turns back on itself and doubts itself, its current understanding of physics in this case.  Curved space-time was such a demonic notion for a classical Newtonian.  How can mass get larger with speed?  How can a ruler get shorter with speed?  How can time slow down with speed?  Did you know that one of the first ways relativity was proved was by synchronizing two clocks, putting one in a plane and flying it around the world several times and comparing the results when the clocks were brought back together?  Sure enough, they reported different times.  Can you image being one of the folks carrying a clock around in a airplane to see if speed changed it?  No wonder physicists thought Einstein was insane.  Need I discuss string theory?  Have you heard of the m-verse, the multi-universe?  All particles we observe in our universe are really multi-dimensional strings coming in and out of existence or our brane (membrane).  Just as a triangle can never really exist because all space is curved, our brain tells us that it is and we use it every day as an essential tool of technology. 

You may think that the way the “not” circumscribes and denotes what is is insane but the fact is that it is as a “not”.  I am not making this stuff up, only reporting it in the company of those that are much smarter than me.  Sure there are myriad other ways to process this insanity at the roots of the sane but they may only be the illusions of a brain that cannot allow the contradiction to be.  It may be that the evolution of the brain has made it impossible for the concreteness of an absolute “not” that “is”, that necessarily gives rise to “isness” to “see” what shows itself here.  This absolute fissure in achrony, time, how we perceive, understand, know, etc. is an alterity or otherness that can never be gathered or held together – and yet, it must be in its “not being”.  The sense of this is embodied in the intuition that for God to create being and existence God must be outside of being and existence.  Only by God “being” outside of existence can existence be.  This is yet another indication of the insanity that awaits us in the “absolute impossibility of the possibility of death” as Heidegger suggested.  The “me” that is to die cannot in any way conceive of death and yet death “is”.  Be careful as Nietzsche points out that if we look too long in the abyss the abyss will look back into us. 

What gives rise to the “soul”, the different kinds of awareness’s that enables humans to write books, create art, build technology, in effect, create worldhood?  It is the way that we are thrown back on ourselves in the face of the “not”.  It is the reflection that forces us to doubt our concrete perceptions, understandings, knowings.  When we doubt we re-think, we ponder, we try to make sense of, decipher and restore the cosmos to order.  This is our life long burden and we eternally are rolling the stone up a huge, never ending mountain.  While our dilemma may be insane it cannot be argued that it is not concrete and as “real” as any of our functional and assumed realities.  Only by the denial and sublimation of what the conscious cannot conceive can we have an unconscious, a dark side, a mystic writing pad that in advance of our deliberations writes our history and requires our obedience to a call that we cannot choose.  The turn here can only recognize a sort of Kantian category of knowledge.  Light is invisible and yet when it hits mass, particles it gets filtered sort of like a prism and shows color, sight, objects.  Light is not what we are seeing only the effects of the filtering of light.  Likewise, the “not” that necessarily gives rise to being, existence, concreteness is itself always never perceived but in its wake we are and have our being.

The Criminal and The Human – A Rational Approach to Liberalism

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Desperation is pain expressed. Pain necessarily is totalitarian. It encompasses the whole of the person’s existence that experiences it. It demands the person’s full attention. It requires action. There is no free choice in the face of pain. There is only obedience. The person must find a way to stop the pain. Their continued existence depends on finding a way out. There is no `other’ in intense pain. There is no morality. There is no ideology. Rationality is meaningless. There is only the requirement to act immediately. The problem of pain may pose no solution. There may be no hope of surviving. The required action may have no goal other than a desire to stop the pain. The action may only find its termination in death. There may be no other way to return to the living, to the cessation of pain, to the place of rest and repose within existence – the place where the other can have significance.

When a person is in a fight for continued existence there is no `other’ that matters. There is only the imminence of pain. As pain increases the need to act increases. Conversely, the human capacity for the experience of the other decreases. The other as law, morality, concern, ideals, etc. loses its relevance to the person in pain. The self is necessarily projected to the absolute in intense, mortal pain until the self is extinguished in death and is no more. It is important to understand that there is a progression from extreme pain to repose in existence. In rest, the cessation of pain, we can be with others. We can attend to others. We can care. We can show concern. We can love. We can find meaning in being with others. We can sense the necessity of our collectivity, our shared identity, our debt to history via language.

These polarities, pain and repose in existence define our days as humans. There are perhaps those that for biological reasons we do not fully understand are not fully human. They have pathologies such as a serial killer that make them fundamentally different. They look human but they have no soul, no natural response to the other that most of us know and understand in our repose. Pathology, deviation from the norm is real but by definition it is not common. Therefore, it is not essentially human. It is more like a tornado or absolute non-recognition of human. It is totally oblivious to existence as human and owes no requirement for action to the human. It only follows its own necessity for action.

As human we exist in-between pain and repose. To the degree that we experience pain we resort to desperation. Thus, we become criminal. We become self-centered. We take advantage of others. We think more and more of ourselves. The other is sacrificed on the altar of me. The criminal by definition is totalitarian. The criminal is not obliged to act in any way other than its own desire. It has no ideology, no ideals, no concern for the other. It is us to the extent that we experience pain.

At this point, let me add that there is such a thing as phantom pain. There is the perception of threat that sets off all the alarms of pain, the adrenaline to fight or flee without any perceived pain by an outside observer. Anxiety may have no apparent reason to an outside observer. Phantom pain may have a biological component or imaginary. Biological pain that is not apparent to the outside observer can result from physical pathologies, deficiencies or deviation from norms that are purely cellular, hormonal, etc.. As human we have also have the capacity for imagination. Humans can project into the future. We can envision a future, an ideal and take actions to apprehend that future. This capacity also has the ability to deviate from a positive apprehension of the future to a negative apprehension of the future. We can dread the future. We can imagine that the future holds pain and despair. This may for example be at the psychological root of an addiction (not necessarily the physical, biological root of an addiction). We can project the future and apprehend it as negative, undesirable as pain. In this case, all the previously described dynamics of pain are present in the imminence of pain.

To the degree that we act, think, idealize from selfishness, from `me’ at the cost of the other, we express our capacity for suffering, for desperately attempting to alleviate pain. We are only concerned with our survival and not with anyone else’s survival. The driving instinct to self-survival blinds us to the plight of anyone else that may be suffering. For example, we may perceive that we are being taxed to death, threatening our ability to provide food and shelter to ourselves and our family. We may imagine that the future is bleak and we will be living on the street in freezing cold without food. We can do this all the while living in a comfortable 3000 square foot house with our family and a job that pays $75,000 a year. In the perception of this pain there is a need to act, to vote for politicians that we think will lower our taxes and thereby relieve our fears. However, the brute, realistic fact is that there are those that are living in freezing cold with no food. There are those dying in emergency rooms with no health care. There are those that are suffering in a real sense with real pain. The question becomes is my pain really more important than those that are much more apparently suffering?

The option to think this thought is not present for one that is in mortal pain but the possibility for suspension of one’s perceived pain is possible for less extreme situations. The possibility to suspend ones imagined fears for the sake of the other is part of human existence. This, for example, is envisioned in the act of Jesus dying for the sins of the world. We also have the capacity to “die for the sins of the world”. We can refuse to act automatically to our perceived pain and recognize the real pain of the other. We can judge our pain to be less important that the suffering, homeless child. This capacity is purely human.

We can do this because in our repose we can experience ourselves as community, as necessarily understanding ourselves with others. We certainly see proof of this necessity in language. Language fashions how we understand ourselves and the world. Language enables us project into the future, make sense of our past and even make sense of our present. Yet, we did not invent language. It was given as a gift. It already assumes a history, those that went before, those that forged words and thoughts that are essential tools we were freely given.

Aristotle said, “Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.” The reason he said this was because as humans in repose, as essentially a “we” we have the ability to defer to the other. We can make judgments that suspend our desires, our pain and act to relieve worse suffering of the other. This does not mean we always choose this course of action. Pain whether real or perceived pulls us under at times and causes us to act selfishly. This is also purely human. Many philosophers have traditionally thought of our necessary capacity for repose in existence as our higher self. What they mean by this is that we have the innate capacity for acting to relieve the suffering of the other. We can project this capacity into a future and act accordingly. We can think, fashion ideologies that reinforce our higher self. Conversely, we can fashion ideologies that project into the future to reinforce our fears and the need to act selfishly from our pain. We are the ultimate arbiters of how we envision our future. We can indulge our fears or we can hear the cries of the other. We can vote for politicians that we think will appease our suffering or we can vote for politicians that will ask us to sacrifice for the sake of the other. What is required in how we make these judgments is wisdom.

Wisdom is true judgment. Wisdom weighs all the elements of decision correctly. Wisdom is very difficult. For example, we may think all politicians are only out to alleviate their suffering by using politics to enrich themselves and not alleviate the suffering of others. This is the wisdom that true conservatism would teach us. Genuine conservation has the goal of conserving precious resources not for selfishly, perceived goals but for the good of society; so that suffering is addressed efficiently and effectively. When conservatism beats its chest to the Darwinian drum of Ayne Rand1, the Machiavellian war of all against all in defense of an isolated self, a “me” that conquers all and merely takes absolute pride in the destruction of the other for my sake, it sanctifies pain. It does not merely react blindly to pain but it fashions an altar to my right to act only for me even in repose. The question that should be raised here is not moral, altruistic, based on shoulds and shouldn’ts but based on wisdom – how we find ourselves in existence pitched between pain and repose.

As necessarily human we live in the regions of language and desperation, concern for the other and the absolutism of immanent pain and suffering. We are not pure unattached egos, gods free of necessity. We certainly have the capacity for absolute and even necessary selfishness as evidenced in mortal pain but we also have the necessary capacity for collectivity, being with others, love, compassion, concern even at our personal expense. Weighing the outcome of our vote in line with the necessity of our repose, our collective obligation may at times concede that a particular politician is acting for their own pain based reasons but the result of their policies may have opposite consequences. They may be individually, morally reprehensible but they may put programs in place that effectively address real suffering. They may also be individually, morally admirable but put programs in place that only protect their constituents perceived pain (i.e. taxes) while turning a blind eye to millions suffering without health care or basic needs. There are many permutations here but the point is that wisdom requires one to weigh the nuances such that the true outcome is obtained, the goal to alleviate suffering in this case2. Let me also state that this is not a simple matter of Republican or Democrat, it is a matter of recognizing who we are necessarily as humans and requiring that our actions are in line with our projected goals. I have used politics as an example but this discussion has extensions and impacts in many areas not simply civic responsibilities.

We are all accountable to ourselves, our higher selves, our essential capacity to defer ourselves for the other. Again, not due to some perceived altruism, moral obligation, demand from a god or an ideology but because to deny the suffering of the other is to deny the repose of our existence. We need not make repose bourgeois. Neither do we need to make our pain absolute as egoism. A guilty conscious is not called for here at all, only the clarity of wisdom and the actions that necessarily follows.

 

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1 While Ayne Rand stated “I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason” her “reason”s stopped at egoism and the economies of a pain based ideology and could never account for the an equally necessary “we” that is in every way just as much who we are as human as selfishness is in mortal pain. Reason without wisdom goes against who we are, how we find ourselves and fails to truly judge who we are, to see what is in front of us, to take into account the necessary ways we find ourselves in existence.

2 I have also made a similar case in another paper with regard to the free market war of all against all and multinational corporations versus the government. In this case, the interest of repose is best served by their mutual regulation and limitation (see http://mixermuse.com/blog/2010/01/04/free-market-eitheror-government/).

A Brief Introduction to Being and Time

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Heidegger (H.) tells us we all have a pre-cognitive understanding of “being” already at work in our “everydayness”.  There are different ways that we relate to being.  For example, when we use a hammer to build something, we are relating to that hammer with a “pre-understanding” of its being.  We are relating to it in the mode of instrumentality.  In German, Heidegger refers to this as zuhanden, ready-to-hand.  In that mode, “being” shows itself as “disappearing in use”.  We relate to the being of the hammer as a “tool”.  If the hammer breaks while it is disappearing in use we immediately relate to it in another mode “present at hand”.  We look at it and say “stupid hammer” how dare you!  It becomes conspicuous, even a bit intrusive.  “Present at hand” is how science relates to being.  In this mode being is present as a thing (substance), an object of study, and shows itself to us.  In German, Heidegger refers to this as vorhanden, present-at-hand.  For H. when being is mis-understood (semblance) we relate to it in in-authenticity.  If we pre-understand our environment as instrumentality, we use it to accomplish a task such that it disappears in use, we use oil to make our cars go, we use trees to build our houses, etc. –  then, we pre-understand the being of nature/environment as “standing reserve”.  This is the problem of technology.  It comes from a confusion of how we relate to the being of “nature”, as a semblance of “nature”.  Why do I emphasize “nature””?  Because this shows something else about how we relate to being, we are historical beings.  We live in a “stretch” of time that goes from a past to a future not an instant present.  “Nature” is a term/relationship to a being that is carried with us from language, philosophy, history – metaphysics.  It tells us a pre-cognitive understanding of what something “is”, its being.  When what something “is” is a semblance we have failed to relate authentically with “it”.  The being of human (dasein) is what H. spends much of his effort on in Being and Time.  A few examples:   The experience of time – there is lived time and abstract, historical time.  Our history informs us that time is a series of abstract “now” moments and yet the way we live time is as a stretch.  When we are happy time seems/feels like it flies by quickly.  When we are depressed time drags on forever.  So the experience of time is different than the abstract notion of time as “now” moments.  Why do we privilege abstract time? – because we are historical beings and pre-understand time as an abstraction (i.e., a history defined by “now” moments) – this informs us about time – not how we experience it.  Another example:  The experience of space – history tells us that space is linear extension, “things” are x number of feet away in 3 dimensional space…but what about lived space?  – When I am looking at a glass of water while wearing glasses the glasses on my face is closer to me in terms of linear extension but in a lived sense I am closer to the glass of water, I am together with the glass of water, co-habiting its space.  So humans can de-sever regions of space and bring them close or far at will.  If I am walking down a hallway I am not calculating the feet to all the walls, floor and ceiling (as perhaps a robot would do) to orient myself, to keep from falling.  In a lived sense, I am co-habiting the region of the hallway and orienting myself accordingly.  Again, we privilege the abstract over the lived (phenomenological) experience because we are historical beings.  This is a short intro. into H. and his work.  It gets better!

Towards Another Heideggarian Discourse (Update September 1, 2010)

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Revision History December 2007
Original
Revision 1 August 30, 2010
Section ii)
Revision 2 August 31, 2010
Section iii)-(1)-(c), (d), (e) and (g)
Revision 3 September 1, 2010
Section iii)-(1) – much of section 1 has changed

Note: These thoughts have been loosely formulated and as such will probably change a lot over time but, for me, that IS philosophy.
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Some time ago I was reflecting on those I know that have gone into professional philosophy. I always admired that profession but I also observed a conundrum at work in the act of being paid to be a philosopher. It appears that the need to publish and receive acclamation from one’s peers produces a timidity on the part of scholars; a stifling of creativity; a reluctance to think out loud and invite dialog without knowing where it will go or even if the course one has set on is valid at all. Perhaps this is something Socrates may have hinted at with regard to the sophist. In any case, in the interest of playful philosophy or perhaps tragic philosophy I have written a partial outline of some new avenues post Heidegger that may at least be given in the spirit that was Heidegger’s robust and creative thought albeit, without the intellectual vigor…

From the end of the lecture “Time and Being”…

“What remains to be said? Only this: Appropriation appropriates. Saying this, we say the Same in terms of the Same about the Same. To all appearances all this says is nothing. It does indeed say nothing so long as we hear a mere sentence in what was said, and expose that sentence to the cross-examination of logic. But what if we take what was said and adopt it unceasingly as the guide for our thinking, and consider that this Same is not anything new, but the oldest of the old in Western thought: that ancient something which conceals itself in a-letheia? That which is said before all else by the first source of all the leitmotifs of thinking gives voice to a bond that binds all thinking, providing that thinking submits to the call of what must be thought.

The task of our thinking has been to trace Being to its own from Appropriation – by way of looking through true time without regard to the relation of Being and beings.

To think Being without beings means: to think Being without regard to metaphysics. Yet a regard for metaphysics still prevails even in the intention to overcome metaphysics . Therefore our task is to cease all overcoming, and leave metaphysics to itself.

If overcoming remains necessary, it concerns that thinking that explicitly enters Appropriation in order to say It in terms of It about It.

Our task is unceasingly to overcome the obstacles that tend to render such saying inadequate.

The saying of Appropriation in the form of a lecture remains itself an obstacle of this kind. The lecture has spoken merely in propositional statements.”

Martin Heidegger

With this in mind…

a) A Possible Heideggarian Resolution (a sketch) – Phenomenology Revisited

i) Definitions

(1) Being when used here is Ontology, the study of Being as predominately meant by Heidegger

(2) being(s) when used here refers to ontic, particular beings

(3) Sorge (Care) is the temporal structure of Dasein’s throwness

(4) Dasein is the ontological level of human being

(5) dasein(s) is the ontic, individual human being

(6) existentiell pertains to individual understanding of oneself `along the way’ B&T, pg 33

(7) traditional ecstasies is the thrown ontological structure of dasein as `ahead of itself’, the `back to’ and the `alongside’ (ontically future, past, present)

ii) Martin Heidegger’s monumental work Being and Time provided an incredible analysis of Dasein (the `there’ of being, human being). Fundamental to Heidegger’s analysis of the Being of human being is Sorge. Sorge is the structure that constitutes Being temporally in its thrownness. Heidegger calls this `ecstasies’ (Greek root combining ek—`outside’, with stasis—`to stand’). The traditional ecstasies is Dasein’s `ahead of itself’, the `back to’ and the `alongside’. This is not an abstract theory about how Being might be thought. Sorge is thought from facticity. Facticity is the practical observations (phronesus) of how humans beings are in the world (Sorgensumsicht). In Being and Time, Being is thought from the ground up where `ground’ is how dasein (individual human beings) experience their being-in-the-world, and pre-cognitively understand Being. This structure is at the core of Heidegger’s analysis and should beg the question, are there any other important experiences of temporality that dasein experiences that are decidedly different from the ones Heidegger discusses and yet, structurally significant for Being? If so, could this impact the `turn’ of Heidegger in which Heidegger himself puts his earlier work, Being and Time, in question? It seems that as Heidegger looks more and more at the nothing from which Dasein is thrown what comes to the fore undermines any possibility for truth (aletheia) and his decisive notion of the possibility for authenticity is cast into a deep and bewildering darkness – Ereignis. This outline is a preliminary sketch and thought experiment into how Heidegger’s analytic might be phenomenologically adjusted to account for Ereignis. In order to do this, two new temporal `ecstasies’ are introduced “Nothing Time” and “Dream Time” and the traditional understanding of ‘ecstasies’ is modified. Much of Heidegger’s traditional analysis will still stand in what is called “Awake Time” but differences will be investigated. Note – The two new ecstasies are first given ontically as existentiell `experiences’ of dasein and then suggestions are made as to why this may be thought as ontologically significant with regard to the temporal ecstasies of Dasein.

I would also add that Heidegger never finished his project of Being and Time. While the final division of Being and Time was never written, Heidegger did leave notes about what it would contain. Heidegger was an Aristotelian scholar. He thought of Aristotle as the first and vastly misunderstood (vis-à-vis the Latin and Christian reading of Aristotle and the misreading of ousia) phenomenologist. However, Heidegger did take exception with Aristotle on the notion on time. He referred to his conception as the common conception or vulgar conception of time. This is time thought in terms of ‘now’ moments. He thought that time read through Aristotle was thought in terms of the ecstasies of being-present (parousia). I would content that if a phenomenologist wants to factually about the temporality of dasein you would have to think about how we experience temporality. We certainly have an experience of the future, the present and the past but these are not the only way we experience temporality. Why wouldn’t we as after the temporality of dreams? Why wouldn’t we question the temporality of dreamless sleep? Could it be that these common experiences give us a hint of where Heidegger may have gone in the final division of Being and Time? Could this lead us in the direction of ereignis?

iii) Three Important Temporalities of Dasein

(1) Nothing Time – “Whoever sees God dies. In speech what dies is what gives life to speech; speech is the life of that death, it is “”the life that endures death and maintains itself in it.”” What wonderful power. But something was there and is no longer there. Something has disappeared. How can I recover it, how can I turn around and look at what exists before, if all my power consists of making it into what exists after?” The Gaze of Orpheus, Literature and the Right to Death, Maurice Blanchot, page 46

(a) The temporality of “nothing time” is what dasein experiences under anesthesia. The patient remembers counting backward and opens their eyes to find they are in the recovery room. The temporality of “nothing time” is what dasein experiences when they close their eyes momentarily to sleep and open them to find that the entire night has passed. This happens more with children. [Note: This could actually be called dreamless sleep. In the stages of sleep every night there is REM where dreams occur and there is deep sleep which is the “nothing time” spoken of here. It happens every night but because there are other stages of sleep the example is clearer from what was given.] The phenomenological experience of this temporality is nothing, no duration. It strikes one as having been only when one awakes from it (if one does). The experience of nothing time is only recognized after it has passed and only tangentially. It gets pieced together as a radical disjuncture epso facto. Worldhood is non-existent for nothing time. There is no retreat of beings. Neither is there any awareness, much less a subject that even recognizes nothing time.

(b) For nothing time, Sorge as constituted as ‘primordial time’ (pg 277 B&T), as traditional ecstasies, is non-existent. The entire existential structure of Being with its ontic manifestations is null. While death may be the possibility for (pg294) the absolute impossibility of Dasein, nothing time cannot be ‘ahead of itself’ or ‘towards and end’. It can only be surmised when dasein rises again into Being, when it’s roused as Sorge .

(c) Ontically, in nothing time, there is no responsibility or decision, accountability is an absolute impossibility. There is no such phenomenality as being-towards-nothing-time as in being-towards-death as Dasein’s ownmost possibility (page 294). However, it is non-relational in a way that even being-towards-the-end is not. Being-towards-the-end is an existentiell possibility of Dasein. Nothing time is not a ‘sway’ of Dasein but a rupture, a black hole that the everydayness of Dasein must cover over. It is an existentiell rupture of dasein. The throwness of dasein as void is highlighted by nothing time. The possibility for dasein as nothing is shown (aletheia) from the ontic capacity for dreamless sleep. Nothing time points to the steresis of Aristotle as semblance.

[Note: “Heidegger says that the basic category of steresis dominates Aristotle’s ontology. Steresis means lack, privation. It can also mean loss or deprivation of something, as in the example of blindness, which is a loss of sight in one who by nature sees. Steresis can also mean confiscation, the violent appropriation of something for oneself that belongs to another (Met. 1022 b33). Finally, Aristotle often calls that which is held as other in an opposition of contraries a privation. Heidegger will point out in his later essay on Physics B1 that Aristotle understands this deprivation as itself a kind of eidos. Thus, steresis is the lack that belongs intrinsically to being. According to Heidegger, with the notion of steresis Aristotle reaches the pinnacle of his thinking about being. Heidegger even remarks that Hegel’s notion of negation needs to be returned to its dependency on Aristotle’s more primordial conception of the not.” Heidegger and Aristotle The Twofoldness of Being by Walter A. Brogan, page 19]

(d) There is no authentic ontology that can be thought from the ontic of nothing time. Nothing time is the radical exteriority that cannot be captured ontologically except as inauthentic. Being has no foot hold in it. There is no light or clearing that can be cast into it, there is no ‘in’ or ‘out’. It can be posited or gleamed only after the fact (inductively) in its recovery into being as only a false ‘not’. As steresis, the time of nothing time is an absolute achrony, an in-between. A false synthesis is only made possible from the falsity of the ‘not’ of awake time (discussed later) of “Being”, as lichtung (clearing) within Being. Being can only totalize nothing time as its light must rise from itself with no penetration into the event horizon of nothing time. For nothing time all information is lost and can only be recovered on it’s hitherto. Nothing time is the absolute zero degrees Kelvin of Dasein. From the light of Being, nothing time is the temporality of mysticism. Nothing time is not ‘my’ time. Light (lichtung) and its absence (apousia) can only change it (totalize it), it cannot capture it. It cannot even be thought as nothing without covering it over. Nothing time as third person, an it, is already a reductio ad absurdum, a covering over of what is aimed at.

(e) From the clearing of Being, nothing time is what is meant by the inauthentic (verfallen) form of time known as the ‘now’ moment. This ‘vulgar concept of time’ is the semblance, the covering over of sheer exteriority that undoes dasein. Dasein assigns an everyday notion of time to it’s (nothing time’s) non-existence. Thus Dasein escapes into a supposed linear succession of ‘now’ moments to account for the radical rupture of itself. The ‘now’ moment, the present, is the in-between being-towards the past and the future. It is kairos, fullness of the moment of being that being can never own, that eternally escapes Being. The ‘now’ is not chronos as Aristotle thought in Physics IV. From the beginning, the covering over is shown by the Sophists that took over kairos. Nothing time can never be recalled only hinted at by induction (epagoge) without light or its ‘not’. It is interesting to note that the ontic of nothing time has no ontological category. This is something that Heidegger would think would violate the whole notion of ontic and ontological. The contradiction is due to the fact that the ontic experience of nothing time can never be captured by the light (lichtung) OR ‘not light’ without eradicating it, totalizing it. The type that is indicated by the finite and the ‘not finite’ (infinite), the mortal and the ‘not mortal’ (immortal), nature and ‘not nature’ (the divine), master and ‘not master’ (slave) is not of the same type as the facticity of nothing time and the rupture of ontology. If the equivocation of these two types is maintained then an essential (wesen) differance (allusion to Derrida) is recuperated back into the canonical narrative of metaphysics. The anarchistic break of metaphysics is lost and taken back into the semblance (phainomenon) of Logocentrism. There is no authentic ‘showing’ of the ontological from the ontic in the case of nothing time.

(f) [possible avenue] Nothing time makes possible the erasure of the trace (deconstruction). The rupture of ontology makes possible the violence of the arche. [Ereignis actually opens the way for post modernism but this analysis may not only give resolve to the Heideggarian dilemma but also give some voice to the concerns of deconstruction, viz. the dynamic of the play of multiple texts.]

(g) [possible avenue] Need to explore how metaphysics, Being as suspended from nothing, is related to nothing time.

(h) [possible avenue] Since nothing time leaves an ontological rupture in Being it opens up Being to the possibility of radical alterity, an alterity that is not even yet an ‘It’. This rupture may allow the kairos of the Other. As such, the radical alterity, the achrony of the he or she that Levinas points toward. The covering over, the neutralization, is the primal violence that eradicates the other. It steals the time of the other as ‘my time’. It sublates me and other. This is the averagness of Das Man. The gap opened in ontology may hold open the possibility for Ethics. In this sense, the Ethical cannot be derived (i.e., from ontology). The radical disruption of the ontic and the ontological in this case is maintained as the Ethical. If this rupture is not maintained then the light (and its ‘not’) becomes the techne of production, the origin (arche) of Being, and Aristotle’s beginning ends in the quiddity of technology, standing reserve; all have become the foundry of nihilism, alienation is the telos of human being. The Decision is narcissistic alienation or the opening Levinas has made, Ethics. [This also depends on the discussion below about how all of these temporalities coalesce with each other. It needs to be fleshed out more here.]

(2) Dream Time – “The void that hollows out is immediately with the mute and anonymous rustling of the there is [ilya], as the place left vacant by one who died is filled with the murmur of the attendants…The there is [ilya] fills the void left by the negation of Being.” Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence, Emmanual Levinas, page 3 – 4 “…it is no longer this inspiration at work, this negation asserting itself, this idea inscribed in the world as though it were the absolute perspective of the world in its totality. It is not beyond the world, but neither is it the world itself: it is the presence of things before the world exists, their preservation after the world has disappeared, the stubbornness of what remains after everything vanishes and the dumbfoundedness of what appears when nothing exists. That is why it cannot be confused with consciousness, which illuminates things and makes decisions; it is my consciousness without me, the radiant passivity of mineral substances, the lucidity if the depths of torpor. It is not the night; it is the obsession of the night; it is not the night, but the consciousness of the night, which lies awake watching for a chance to surprise itself and because of that is constantly being dissipated. It is not the day, it is the side of the day that day has rejected in order to become light. And it is not death either, because it manifests existence without being, existence which remains below existence, like an inexorable affirmation, without beginning or end – death as the impossibility of dying.” The Gaze of Orpheus, Literature and the Right to Death, Maurice Blanchot, page 47

(a) The temporality of “dream time” is what Dasein experiences during sleep. Dream time has a feel of duration but there is no traditional ecstasies, no sense of a stretch of time. Dream time is the temporality of writing and the infinite rearrangement of signs. Dream time has Worldhood but without Logos. It is as if Being were cut into a million pieces and thrown into the wind. It is the time of Ilya. Sense and meaning are random and arbitrary; there is only apeiron (chaos); as logic is a random sign so is contradiction. Logocentrism is meaningless. It is as if emotion, profundity, language, history, desire, hate, fear, anxiety, responsibility and decision are all random ‘symbiotic’ syntax. Profound sense and confusion simultaneously reign supreme. The ‘there’ and the not-‘there’ are simultaneously present. The temporality of dream time is disjointed and without consistent narrative. It is multiple narratives without coincidental temporalities. Temporalities without synchronicity, without unity although they can whimsically play at this. Dream time is broken and when dasein awakes can only be remembered, if at all, in pieces in the mode of interrogative. Dream time does not concretize human experience. It only floats human experience randomly. [Dream time is the necessary `symbiotic’ underside of Being. – reminiscent of Blanchot, Scene of Writing. It is the necessary `unconscious’ for `conscious’, the mystic writing pad. Research suggests that hypnosis engages the dream time activity of the brain. This activity operates normally in waking life, i.e., when people drive cars, listen to Bush ;-), etc. It makes people susceptible to suggestion, i.e. marketing, politics.]

(b) Dream time is the temporality of writing, the time of the poet, the representation of the artist (Salvador Dali).

(c) For Being, Dream time is what is meant by the inauthentic form of time known as ‘everydayness’, the possibility to be lost, fallen from ones ownmost, confused and set adrift, the possibility for the random. [It seems to give a phenomenological basis for `everydayness’ – the Das Man is a dream, inauthenticity has its structural roots in this new ecstasies.] However, Being can recover dream time as possibility (i.e., for authenticity), to wake from sleep. [Actually, this more of the hermeneutic of dream time from the perspective of Being (awake time).] It is a temporal contrast to the traditional ecstasies discussed by Heidegger.

(d) In deconstruction, dream time is the possibility for the self-destruction of any narrative. The seeds of the texts demise are always “there” and in its margins. The narrative is understood in the awake time (spoken of below) but the counter texts and other texts are recessed into the temporality of dream time.

(3) Awake Time – “Only an entity which, in its Being, is essential futural so that it is free for it’s death and can let itself be thrown back upon it’s factical “there” by shattering itself against death – that is to say, only an entity which, as futural, is equiprimordial in the process of having-been, can, by handing down to itself the possibility it has inherited, take over its own thrownness and be in the moment of vision for `its time’. Only authentic temporality which is at the same time finite, makes possible something like fate – that is the say, authentic historicality.” B&T, page 437.

(a) Much of this analysis is already done in Being and Time as Sorge. [Note: Need to flesh out confusions of these temporalities here in Heidegger’s analysis.] His analysis concerns itself primarily with awake time. This is the temporality of Sorge (Care). The traditional ecstasies that constitute “the phenomena of the future, the character of having been, and the present” B&T, page. 377

(b) Nullity is a confusion of the traditional ‘ecstasies’ and nothing time.

(c) Everydayness is confusion the traditional ‘ecstasies’ and dream time.

iv) The Overlap of Temporalities

(1) Heidegger’s traditional analysis of ecstasies is the convergence of the ‘ahead of itself’, the ‘back to’ and the ‘alongside’ are primarily the analytic of awake time. Equiprimordial to Heidegger’s traditional ecstasies is nothing time and sleep time. With the addition of these fundamental temporalities to Heidegger’s analysis the analytic of Dasein can find a firmer post-turn and post modern footing. Just as the three traditional ecstasies Heidegger discusses converge as the temporality of Dasein with each retaining its own specificity so too does dream time and nothing time converge as ‘equiprimordial’ with the other three. They retain their uniqueness as well. They cannot be absorbed into the analytic of Sorge because they violate the basic structure (i.e., ‘ahead of itself’, the ‘back to’ and the ‘alongside’) of the traditional analytic.

(a) The new analytic is not de-severance as Heidegger discusses with regard to spatiality. De-severance brings region near and far. However, just as the convergence of the tradition ecstasies can give way to the ontic notions as ‘living in the past’ or ‘living for the future’ or ‘living in the now’ so too can the equiprimordial ecstasies of dream time and nothing time give way in awake time to the temporality of the work of art or the mystic relation with (secret) God.

(i) Much like calculus with differentiation and integration

(2) These `not’s are all seated in the temporality of awake time, Hegelian idealism.

(a) The ‘not’ of awake time is nothing time and dream time.

(b) The ‘not’ of dream time is the nothing time and awake time.

(c) The ‘not’ of nothing time is dream time and awake time.

(3) The overlaps

(a) Nothing time and awake time in the mystics, in deconstruction (as trace), in Levinas (as Other given by the face of the other), in poetry (as radical distance), in religion (as in-effable, the God of unknowing)

(b) Nothing time and dream time in Dali

(c) Nothing time, awake time and dream time confused as the history of metaphysics

(d) Dream time and awake time in Levinas’ analysis of insomnia

(e) Awake and dream time in lucid dreams

(f) Ontology as phenomenology, dialectic of space (Hegel), as metaphysics

(g) Ontic/Ontological, authentic/inauthentic, metaphysical/exteriority – all can be analyzed in terms of these three temporalities

v) Other temporalities

(1) There are other temporalities that bound and overlap the new analytic of Dasein. The other temporalities gird, underscore, make possible the ontic and ontological conditions for Being and allow the new analytic of Dasein. This is not meant as an objective present-at-hand lapse into a confused metaphysics and mere theorizing. This needs to be worked out but any temporal analytic of Dasein and Being must itself be worked towards a completeness that includes overlapping albeit less influential and varying temporalities of wesen (environment). These temporalities cannot be dismissed out of hand or ignored; they ‘ripple’ into the very fabric of Being.

(2) Types [If phenomenology can find another connection with science other than the one Heidegger gave viz., correctness, propositional correspondence viz. the metaphysics of presence (present-at-hand and idea for Plato) it may be that science can add some authenticity to Being and structural agreement in phenomenology or… not. The criticism against Heidegger and nature’s exclusion may be overcome]

(a) Quantum

(b) Nature/Life/Evolutionary

(c) Geological

(d) Astronomical

(3) De-severance Overlaps of other temporalities with Dasein.

(a) TBD [How would this work? If the work of Levinas de-centralizes the totalitarian aspects of Being viz. the face of the other, this could be seen as a Copernican type revolution in the Heideggarian analysis not to think Being as present-at-hand but to think the relationships between Being and Ereignis.]

vi) All of the temporalities previously discussed are meant by Ereignis. [Much work remains to be done here]

(1) The turn of Heidegger, the gap from Being and Time to Enowning are brought about by the gaps in the traditional analytic found in Being and Time. The work of Being and Time is too rich and has impacted philosophy too much to simply dismiss. However, the gaps in the analytic even lead Heidegger to question the whole analytic in Being and Time.

(2) When metaphysics confuses these temporalities [i.e., nothing time, dream time and awake time] we get such notions as ‘abstract’ [i.e., not ‘grounded’ in awake time] and ‘concrete’ [i.e., ‘grounded’ in awake time], ‘profound’ [i.e., the lichtung, light of Being in awake time] and ‘mundane’ [i.e., the underside, night of Being in awake time, can’t fit in logos/logic], ‘real’ [i.e., awake time, logos] and ‘illusion’ [i.e., dream time].

(3) Aletheia unconceals but requires dream time to cover over [dream time is the concealment and from the ‘perspective’ of awake time the root of semblance] – it is concealment in awake time.

(4) Metaphysics requires nothing time. [see What is Metaphysics]

(5) For Hegel, idealism requires the dialectic of temporalities. [i.e., the ‘not’ that overcomes the contradiction of thesis and antithesis so that it can re-instate them both into the higher level of synthesis requires awake time for the contradiction to stand, for Ideas to eternally reinstate/inscribe themselves into history/logos. This may give some sort of phenomenological basis for a ‘perspective’ of Hegel (??)]

…

Any thoughts, ideas, contributions or simple mockery would be appreciated…Mark