Zizek, Hegel, Possibility

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This is why the Hegelian ‘loss of the loss’ is definitively not the return to a full identity, lacking nothing. the ‘loss of the loss’ is the moment in which loss ceases to be the loss of ‘something’ and becomes the opening of the empty place that the object (‘something’) can occupy, the moment in which the empty place is conceived as prior to that which fills it – the loss opens up a space for the appearance of the object. In the ‘loss of the loss’, the loss remains a loss, it is not ‘cancelled’ in the ordinary sense: the regained ‘positivity’ is that of the loss as such, the experience of loss as a ‘positive’, indeed ‘productive’, condition.

Would it not be possible to define the final moment of the analytic process, the passe, as precisely this experience of the ‘positive’ character of loss, of the original void filled by the dazzling and fascinating experience of the fantasmatic object, the experience that the object as such, in its fundamental dimension, is the positivization of a void? Is this not the traversing of the fantasy, this experience of the priority of place in relation to the fantasmatic object, in the moment when, recalling the formula of Mallarmé, ‘nothing takes place but the place’?

In the field of philosophy, Hegelian Absolute Knowledge – and perhaps only Hegelian Absolute Knowledge – designates the same subjective position, that of the traversing of the fantasy, the post-fantasmatic relationship to the object, the experience of the lack in the Other. Perhaps the unique status of Hegelian Absolute Knowledge is due to the question that can be posed to proponents of the so-called ‘post-Hegelian inversion’, whether the likes of Marx or Schelling: is this ‘inversion’ not, in the last resort, a flight in the face of the unbearability of the Hegelian procedure? The price of their ‘inversion’ seems to be a reading of Hegel that is totally blind to the dimension evoked by the traversing of the fantasy and the lack in the Other: in this reading. Absolute Knowledge becomes the culminating moment of so-called ‘idealist panlogicism’, against which one is able, of course, to affirm without any problem the ‘process of effective life’.

The Most Sublime of Hysterics: Hegel with Lacan, Slavoj Zizek

The conception of the self (ego) as identical with, yet threatened by and aggressive toward, the other (specular image) is at bottom alienation pure and simple; seeing him or herself as the other and other as self makes the very notion of selfhood one typified by a perpetual oscillation between projection and assimilation. The self and other are thus two sides of the same process, at the heart of which is alienation; they are mutually dependent on each other for their definitions, imaginatively existing while in reality merely ex-sisting: “The ego and the counterpart form the prototypical dual relationship, and are interchangeable. This relationship whereby the ego is constituted by identification with the little other means that the ego, and the imaginary order itself, are both sites of a radical alienation” (Evans 82). As Lacan says, although in an inversion of terms which reveals the mutually constitutive relationship of alienation to the imaginary, “alienation is constitutive of the imaginary order” (qtd. in Evans 82). Alienation, the ability to think the self as other and the other as self is thus the defining feature of the I, the basis for the fantasy of selfhood.

Returning thus to desire as a constitutive feature of human existence, we find a ready expression of how the desire for the other’s desire functions in the mirror stage. As I have shown above, the infant enters the imaginary through a process of identification with a specular image, an “other” with which it longs to be identified. The essential component to such identification, however (and the aspect that renders it impossible), is the necessity for the other similarly to desire identification with the infant. This desire for the other’s desire is not a simple matter of mutual desire such as that experienced in erotic love, but a more all-encompassing demand for total recognition; the infant wants not some part (however large) of the other’s desire, but all of it – he or she wants to be the be-all and end-all of the other’s desire. The impossibility of such a total identification is what keeps subjectivity moving from object to object in its quest for an object that will represent and capture the other’s desire and by possession of which the individual can absorb and utterly subjugate the other’s desire. Most simply put, desire is always a desire for the other’s desire; only the other’s desire for a given object transforms it from an object of demand or need into one of desire.

A Very Brief Introduction to Lacan, Prepared by Professor Stephen Ross

It seems to me that there is a play of differences in the way Zizek thinks of Hegel and the way the “post-Hegelian inversion” of “idealist panlogicism” would think of Hegel. If we think of the latter as the final move of Concept that loses contingencies from being and essence, truly the ‘concrete universal’ (asymptotic as abstract universality but concretized by taking full account of particularities), then the stated thesis eliminates the possibility for criticism and lays hold of the claim for presupposition-less. The concrete universal cannot be lacking. Otherwise, it would not be concrete; it would be abstract. By definition, the Concept as concrete universal must be self-determined. If it is not self-determined it would not be concrete. A tautology is hidden in this formula that must, of necessity, be true. If a concrete universal means that all contingencies are taken account of in the sublation of the Concept then an argument against the concreteness of the universal only proves what it would criticize – that the argument is already taken account of in the earlier movements of Spirit (being, essence). This also proves the presupposition-less claim that presuppositions are not dismissed but accounted for; therefore, there are no presuppositions. This is a ‘check mate’ of Spirit.

Many critiques against the pan logicians including Zizek’s Hegelian reading are already interior to the argument and can only result in a misunderstanding of latter moves. Thus, Zizek must have attributed a foundationalism to Hegel’s moment of negation that refuses the move into the resolution of oppositions, resolution not as some kind of new-age’y, mush of unity but as holding terms in their distinctness together. Thus the lack created by the loss of the phantasm of the object stops short of the culmination of the self in the object and the object in the self. Even from Lacan the self as mirrored from image, the specular, is the fantasm of object. Therefore, the lack in object and final depletion of desire, aggression; fantasm, is simultaneously the end of the spectacle. The self-object as master-slave dies and, according to the Concept, is resurrected in its final unity (which is all it ever really was). Thus, the negation gives way to inevitability, the final state of completion and therefore, self-determination. The critique of Zizek has been taken hold of and accounted for; Zizek no longer has to reify loss but let it pass into its natural death to find its completion in Concept.

This illustrates the impossibility of falsifying tautology. Critiques from psychology whether individual or sociological; political whether bourgeois or materialistic; philosophical whether categorical, empirical, existential or nihilistic; religious and mystical will always be taken already into account by the concretized absolute power of tautology. To criticize Hegel is tantamount to suggesting that true is false for pan-Logic. To think the concrete absolute is not concrete is to affirm that the concrete universal ‘is’. In this then the Concept has emancipated itself.

The emancipation of the Concept certainly does acquire the sure footing of self-sufficiency. It completes the lack of self and object (specular) in itself. The completion is not a lack but a fullness; the subject and object complete themselves in each other. Therefore, the lack is regarded as only a negative step along the way to Concept. The final Concept is not the final solution, the foundationalism of violence, otherwise it would not be universal. The concrete universal must contain all individual objections and contingencies as moments of hierarchy. The tautological seal must be all inclusive for the Concept to be what it is. -In this then has the authentic notion of tautology been universalized. When tautology is universal and concrete it must, by definition, provide a hermeneutic for any excess. Even more so, there is no ‘excess’ to Concept, no exteriority, as that would defy itself; the excess of Being and Essence IS Concept.

The possibility for no excess to Concept is impossible. If there truly is no excess, the possibility cannot exist, have essence or be thought…and yet, it ‘is’. Existentially, the absolute impossibility of the possibility of excess to the Concept exists (exits). It may be fantasm that the pan logicians must perpetually defend against. It may already be taken hold of in earlier movements of Spirit but how could it be if it is what it is?

Let’s recapitulate, the possibility referred to here is not a contingent claim against the Concept but a universal claim against the concrete universal – the possibility of excess to ‘concrete’ universality. Of course, the logical play is that would not be universal but abstract universality. Thus, to speculate that there is a possibility for excess to ‘concrete’ universality is to misunderstand the tautological definition of concrete universal. This ‘misunderstanding’ contradicts the defining ‘definition’ and therefore cannot be allowed. To allow it would be to allow nonsense, chaos, contradiction…perhaps what may be meant as existence?…poetry?…the supplement of writing? Is there a ‘concrete’ existence that is not taken account of by the pan logicians? Perhaps the moment of Being exceeds the contingency of Being without arriving at Concept. There may be lack in the notion of existence that topples the triads of the Logic. “Ah”, you say, “but that then would not be existence because existence would have to take hold of chaos (apeiron (ἄπειρον) – unlimited, infinite or indefinite from ἀ– a-, “without” and πεῖραρ peirar, “end, limit”, the Ionic Greek form of πέρας peras, “end, limit, boundary”).”

Could the alpha-privative of limit, form, Concept already have been thought of at the beginning as the (Hegelian) end? Wouldn’t this turn the whole notion of progress, world historical Spirit, on its head? Why would it not be possible to turn the Hegelian tautology on its head and think of chaos (and contingency) not as a moment of Concept but Concept as a moment of chaos?

In thinking of the chaotic thought of excess not as abstracted from the concrete but as exceeding the concrete (henceforth the Possibility) we may have tried to think the sublimely ridiculous but we may also have stumbled back into existence not as a moment of Concept but as an excess of Concept. To suggest that the thought is absurd (ever heard of Kierkegaard) is not to extinguish its ridiculousness but merely to ignore it. The Possibility may take on all the adjectives of disdain, derision, improper, profane and unholy but nevertheless, even a Hegelian, could not deny that it COULD be posed (in all its horror and lunacy). This positing would then be an exteriority- perhaps a bastard exteriority as Chaos and Eros (neither divine nor mortal but a bastard) for Hesiod but nevertheless, an exteriority.

The impossibility of this exteriority may inherit all the moral indignations that it deservedly acquires from pan-Logic but Possibility must exist as a bastard. The ‘must exist’ not of subjugated moment but as circumscription of Concept may be Hesiod’s chaos. In Possibility, Concept may be but a moment albeit an eternal moment. Tautology would thus not be contradicted but in the possibility of the im-possibility of this otherness, the thought that can’t be, allowed to be, even thought; -the secret that cannot be uttered, the Other that cannot be faced – it undoes me and Concept(s). Perhaps in this undoing, absolutely chaotic passivity, anarchy; there may be something as Ethics – the need to act from the other that faces me in his or her im-Possibility. Of course, I know that all this can be re-appropriated into its proper ‘place’, its bare nakedness as Possibility can be thought as what it is ‘not’ or as what it should be or really ‘is’ but that would not think the thought as given but as what could be accounted for, what it really could be. This ‘real’ turns on the necessity of the Concept not the idea given by Possibility. Thus the materiality of the idea is transformed into its ideal. The eternal question that must reoccur is the violence of the ‘same’ – the totality of the Concept.

It may be that Possibility can be just as archaic and violent not as unifying violence but as tearing down violence (mystification). It may be that Possibility may throw out Ethics just as likely as it would include it. Violence in this case would be an overtaking of the other, the other that cannot be allowed, that must be mastered in order for the self to survive and thrive. It may be that Possibility would re-enact the fantasm of object; even more, give it unrestricted license. Agreed, Possibility is not bonded to Ethics. It may be that Possibility is the ‘rabbit hole’ of Alice. These objections do not take away Possibility although they do try to give it place. However, its place-less-ness remains; it’s excess to place. It is just as likely and historically, probably much more likely, that the bastardization of Concept can take its leave of Ethics. I know that the true Hegelian would protest that this is not the true Concept as a Christian would proclaim that the true Christ is not the Christ of the Crusades. Nevertheless, the profanity of the Concept has occurred in history and will occur again. The rubric of the proper has always held the potential for mass im-properness (Foucault). It may be that when the improper profanity of Concept is fueled by the fire of concrete absolutism, a kind of ‘no exit’ from Concept increases the passion of extremism to the infinite (a negative Kierkegaard theology). There certainly seems to be a historical circularity of the impossibility of the canonical text, concrete universality, as Derrida may point out. However, the trace may be the Concept’s impossible repeatability as ‘pure’, -each repetition is condemned to fail from its own infinite insistence of itself. In this case, Possibility may restrain the fanaticism of the play of Concept. Possibility then would not, could not ever be eternal or mortal but an interlude that humanizes in the shadow of Concept.

 

 

Greek Mythos (updated 2/16/12)

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First of all Chaos came-to-be; but then afterwards Broad-breasted earth, a secure dwelling place forever for all (the immortals who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus, and misty Tartara in the depths under the wide-wayed grounds and Eros who, handsomest among the deathless gods a looser of limbs, in all the gods and in all human beings overpowers in their breasts their intelligence and careful planning. And from Chaos came-to-be both Erebos and dark night, and from night, in turn, came-to-be both Aither and day, whom she conceived and bore after joining in love with Erebos. But earth first begat, as an equal to herself, starry sky, so that he might cover her on all sides, in order to be a secure dwelling place forever for all the blessed gods, and she begat the tall mountains, pleasing haunts of the goddess-nymphs who make their homes in the forested hills, and also she bore the barren main with its raging swell, the sea, all without any sweet act of love; but then next, having lain with sky, she bore deep-swirling ocean.[i]

The underworld, Hades, was bounded by five rivers: Acheron (the river of sorrow), Cocytus (the river of lamentation), Phlegethon (the river of fire), Lethe (the river of forgetfulness) and Styx (the river of hate). Lethe was the daughter of Eris (strife) and Nyx (night) , and the sister of Ponos (toil), Limos (starvation), the Algea (pains), the Hysminai (fightings), the Makhai (battles), the Phonoi (murders), the Androktasiai (man-slaughters), the Neikea (quarrels), the Pseudologoi (lies), the Amphilogiai (disputes), Dysnomia (lawlessness), Atë (ruin), and Horkos (oath).

Aletheia, often translated ‘truth’, is the alpha-privative of Lethe. In the Myth of Er, Plato tells us that after the departed choose the next life they would have to drink of the waters of Lethe, forgetfulness, before they could be re-born. Aletheia is the ‘not’ of forgetfulness, it is remembrance. A later rendition of the myth claims there was another river, Mnemosyne (memory), that the departed could drink from that resulted in a-Lethe, remembrance. Zeus and Mnemosyne slept together for nine nights and Mnemosyne gave birth to the nine muses. One of the muses, Erato (the lovely, the desired), was the muse of poetry and mimicry. Erato is from the same Greek root as Eros.

For Heidegger, Lethe was concealment and aletheia was unconcealment or uncovering. Lethe was oblivion (covering), perhaps the il ya (there is) of Blanchot. Oblivion is not nothing but chaos (without genealogy), absolute indeterminacy, the incessant buzz of anticorrelation – the ‘not’ of relation. The copula in ‘A is B’ relates ‘A as B’. The ‘isness’ of ‘A is B’ instantiates being through the relation ‘as’. The phonemes in ‘as’ signifies relation and connects the symbols (symbole) ‘A’ and ‘B’. Sign, the ‘as’ (phone) of ‘A as B’, hold together the symbols ‘A’ and ‘B’ in their separateness without conflating them. Sign signifies not only the relation with ‘A’ and ‘B’ but distinguishes a uniqueness between ‘A’ and ‘B’ that stands out. What ‘stands out’ from what? –Logos. At the same time that ‘A’ and ‘B’ relate they are also set apart from something else that is dissimilar. ‘A as B’ unconceals a relatedness but equiprimordially (equally primordial) also conceals the background from which the concealedness is possible.

The Greeks thought of this ‘background’ as logos. The simultaneous unconcealing and concealing is what Heidegger says that the Greeks called ‘aletheia’ and ‘lethe’. Aletheia is simply the negation of lethe. This is important because ‘truth’ as aletheia is rooted in concealment. There is no ‘truth’ that is pure or proper or holy that stands above, over and against, existence. Essential truth (A) is essential concealment (B). Heidegger notes three modes of concealment: error (Irre), the concealment of error and the mystery of no-thing.

The apprehension (noesis) of symbols (‘A’ and ‘B’, noemata) and the revealing as revelation of their relatedness also hides the as-a-whole, the logos that bind us to them. Every human being, the ‘there of being’ (Dasein), is bound to logos. Simultaneously, logos allows itself to be given over to the dissemination of speech. Logos giving itself over in passivity makes speech (language) possible. As humans we stand together in agreement in existence (ek-sistence, out-standing) for the openness of revelation. Logos given over and filled with the totality of history (world) is always already there in revelation but remains concealed in the act of speech; -this is the source for error. Speech as revelation must conceal much more than it unconceals; -this is error. The forgetting of error is the covering over of error; -Lethe. In apotheosis, the deification of revelation, what was not revealed in the act (i.e., of speech) becomes of no consequence for us, no-thing. No-thing is mystery. Mystery animates from behind the scenes because no-thing is not non-existent (as never has been or will be) but remains dormant, absolutely passive, in the face of the apotheosis of revelation, the error of lethe.

Sign then becomes the nexus formed by the triadic: Being, aletheia, logos of Heidegger; perhaps the real, imaginary, symbol of Lacan[ii]. The ‘as’, referent, unconceals from ‘worldhood’ for Heidegger. World is the history of Being, the ‘as-a-whole’ that can never be made visible. World is always and in every case (ontic, particular) declared in the copula ‘is’ as a pre-condition that gives the possibility for aletheia. The ‘as’ declares (apophantikos) and is only possible from the worlding given by logos:

The “as”-structure itself is the condition of the of the logos apophantikos. The “as” is not some property of the logos, stuck on or grafted onto it, but the reverse: the “as”-structure for its part is in general the condition of the possibility of this logos. (Heidegger, 315/458)

Unconcealedness makes existientiell truth possible. Every ontic ‘there’ of being (da-sein), human being, already speaks (logon) – uses phonemes that project the already-as-a-whole given by logos – the worlding of world. Every human being (ontic, particular) already has agreement of the whole in the sense of thrown into existence from worlding made possible by logos. When ‘A as B’ is said, the cohesion, adherence, relation of the ‘as’ can only ‘be’ from the thrown ‘there’ of beings projected as the openness logos.

“In projection there occurs the letting-prevail of the being of beings in the whole of their possible binding character in each case. In projection, world prevails” (365/530, Heidegger’s emphasis).

In each case of human being there is agreement (kata syntheses) that makes communication possible. Additionally, ‘A as B’ is not a mush of indeterminate-ability but unites (synthesis) the terms by holding them apart (diairesis). If ‘A as B’ is thought as false, it is still a negative modality of truth, aletheia, unconealedness. In this case, the truth is deemed as false. However, the concealed as-a-whole from logos is always already apprehended. If I say, “I am at my house” the ‘mine’ with feet planted on earth under the heavens in dwelling situated before the truths and falsities (gods) of worldhood – all and more are brought together in the simplicity of saying. Of course, the ‘all and more’ are not explicitly thought as they remain concealed, in the background. For Lacan, the background is the unconscious. The unconscious is structured like a language.

Lacan has been criticized by linguists that believe that his structure of language is outdated and inadequate. In other words, if the unconscious is structured like language then the structure of the unconscious must change as our understanding of linguistics changes. Actually, Lacan would have no problem with the idea that particular structures of the unconscious are malleable just as language can change but retain certain ‘deep structures’ as Chomsky noted. For Lacan, the symbolic lack of the primordial symbiosis with the mother can only be mediated by the present structures of a natural language. The significance of the other becomes the repetition of submerged symbol. The imagined ‘original’ symbiosis is retained in repetitive symbols that can only be given from the tools of a native language. In this way a kind of ‘double inscription’ between significance and speech occurs that mutually constrain each other. Speech is not hermetically sealed in some narcissistic monad. Speech is always directed towards the desire for the other that always lacks the originary, the arche, and can only be simulated and supplemented with symbolic representation. The symbol becomes phantasm that nevertheless maintains its essential tension, cognitive dissonance, from the ‘real’ that is impossible (primordial symbiosis) and the phantasm that seeks to replace it from linguistic constructs (all it has) – the symbol is metaphor and metonymy. Lacan said that the ‘unconscious is the discourse [dialectic] of the other’. Aristotle distinguishes human being as ‘zoon logon echon’, the animal having words, speech, logos.

Finally, the points at which the vector of desire and the signifying chain cross can be seen as instances of Freudian double inscription. The ‘conscious and unconscious’ significance of an act or utterance are one and the same, and each constrains the other.[iii]

For Lacan, an infant is first mirrored in the perfect union with the mother. Her facial gestures and motor abilities are the infants as well. However, as the infant begins to realize that he or she does not have motor control skills, the infant is frustrated and struggles to gain motor control. A visceral tension is generated when the infant perceives his or her reflection in the mirror. The reflection displaces the frustration of motor abilities as the reflected image of the baby gets substituted for the kinesthetic lack. The image provides a satisfaction that is lacking in affect. The infant imagines an idealized perfection in the image, the other, and attributes the pleasure of the image to the pleasure of self, the perfected self. Writing of the mirror stage Professor Steven Ross states,

The circularity and self-referentiality of this process is abundantly clear in Bowie’s articulation, as the ego both constructs an ideal version of itself on the basis of various imaginary features with which it would like to be identified, and then acts as though it unpremeditatedly “recognises” itself in objects that bear an imaginary correspondence to that ideal. Basically, the imaginary is the scene in which the ego undertakes the perpetual and paradoxical practice of seeking “wholeness, synthesis, autonomy, duality and, above all, similarity” through identification with external objects. Each such identification is necessarily illusory, however, as it is but a pale imitation of the originary wholeness that was sacrificed in the primal identification of the ego with its specular image in the mirror stage.[iv]

Studies of the brain and the unconscious are providing radical evidence that the ‘agent’ of control is imagined erroneously from disparate and unaware processes that take place in the background of consciousness, the unconscious.  In “The New Unconscious” studies have shown that the unconscious is capable of doing everything that we think should be the function of conscious.  The question that comes out of these studies is, “What is consciousness for?”  This is a rather long quote but it illustrates the point.  Consider these experiments on the principle of agency,

A person cannot possibly think about and be consciously aware of all of the individual muscle actions in compound and sequential movements-there are too many of them and they are too fast (see, e.g., Thach, 1996). Therefore they can occur only through some process that is automatic and subconscious. Empirical support for this conclusion comes from a study by Fourneret and Jeannerod (1998). Participants attempted to trace a line displayed on a computer monitor, but with their drawing hand hidden from them by a mirror. Thus they were not able to see how their hand actually moved in order to reproduce the drawing: they had to refer to a graphical representation of that movement on a computer monitor in front of them. However, unknown to the participants, substantial bias had been programmed into the translation of their actual movement into that which was displayed on the screen, so that the displayed line did not actually move in the same direction as had their drawing hand. Despite this, all participants felt and reported great confidence that their hand had indeed moved in the direction shown on the screen. This could only have occurred if normal participants have little or no direct conscious access to their actual hand movements.[v]

In a study of this principle [the principle of agency], Wegner and Wheatley (1999) presented people with thoughts (e.g., a tape-recorded mention of the word swan) relevant to their action (moving an onscreen cursor to select a picture of a swan). The movement the participants performed was actually not their own, as they shared the computer mouse with an experimental confederate who gently forced the action without the participants’ knowledge. (In yet other trials, the effect of the thought on the participant’s own action was found to be nil when the action was not forced.) Nevertheless, when the relevant thought was provided either 1 or 5 seconds before the action, participants reported feeling that they acted intentionally in making the movement. This experience of will followed the priority principle. This was clear because on other trials, thoughts of the swan were prompted 30 seconds before the forced action or I second afterward-and these prompts did not yield an inflated experience of will. Even when the thought of the action is wholly external-appearing as in this case over headphones-its timely appearance before the action leads to an enhanced experience of apparent mental causation.

The second key to apparent mental causation is the consistency principle, which describes the semantic connectedness of the thought and the action. Thoughts that are relevant to the action and consistent with it promote a greater experience of mental causation than thoughts that are not relevant or consistent. So, for example, having the thought of eating a salad (and only this thought) just before you find yourself ordering a plate of fries is likely to make the ordering of the fries feel foreign and unwilled (Where did these come from,). Thinking of fries and then ordering fries, in contrast, will prompt an experience of will. As another example. consider what happens when people with schizophrenia experience hearing voices. Although there is good evidence that these voices are self-produced, the typical response to such auditory hallucinations is to report that the voice belongs to someone else. Hoffman (1986) has suggested that the inconsistency of the utterance with the person’s prior thoughts leads to the inference that the utterance was not consciously willed-and so to the delusion that others’ voices are speaking “in one’s head.” Ordinarily, we know our actions in advance of their performance and experience the authorship of action because of the consistency of this preview with the action.

In a laboratory test of the consistency principle, Wegner, Sparrow, and Winerman (2004) arranged for each of several undergraduate participants to observe their mirror reflection as another person behind them, hidden from view, extended arms forward on each side of them. The person behind the participant then followed instructions delivered over headphones for a series of hand movements. This circumstance reproduced a standard pantomime sometimes called Helping Hands in which the other person’s hands look, at least in the mirror, as though they belong to the participant. This appearance did not lead participants to feel that they were controlling the hands if they only saw the hand movements. When participants could hear the instructions that the hand helper followed as the movements were occurring, though, they reported an enhanced feeling that they could control the other’s hands.

In another experiment on hand control, this effect was again found. In addition, the experience of willing the other’s movements was found to be accompanied by an empathic sensation of the other’s hands. Participants for this second study watched as one of the hands snapped a rubber band on the wrist of the other, once before the sequence of hand movements and once again afterward. All participants showed a skin conductance response (SCR) to the first snap-a surge in hand sweating that lasted for several seconds after the snap. The participants who had heard previews of the hand movements consistent with the hands’ actions showed a sizeable SCR to the second rubber band snap as well. In contrast, those with no previews, or who heard previews that were inconsistent with the action, showed a reduced SCR to the snap that was made after the movements. The experience of controlling the hand movements seems to induce a sort of emotional ownership of the hands. Although SCR dissipated after the movements in participants who did not hear previews, it was sustained in the consistent preview condition. The consistency of thought with action, in sum, can create a sense that one is controlling someone else’s hands and, furthermore, can yield a physiological entrainment that responds to apparent sensations in those hands. It makes sense in this light that consistency between thought and action might be a powerful source of the experience of conscious will we feel for our own actions as well.

The third principle of apparent mental causation is exclusivity, the perception that the link between one’s thought and action is free of other potential causes of the action. This principle explains why one feels little voluntariness for an action that was apparently caused by someone else. Perceptions of outside agency can undermine the experience of will in a variety of circumstances, but the most common case is obedience to the instructions given by another. Milgram (1974) suggested in this regard that the experience of obedience introduces “agentic shift”-a feeling that agency has been transferred away from oneself. More exotic instances of this effect occur in trance channeling, spirit possession, and glossolalia or “speaking in tongues,” when an imagined agent (such as a spirit, entity, or even the Holy Spirit) is understood to be influencing one’s actions, and so produces a decrement in the experience of conscious will (Wegner, 2002).

A further example of the operation of exclusivity is the phenomenon of facilitated communication (FC), which was introduced as a manual technique for helping autistic and other communication-impaired individuals to communicate without speaking. A facilitator would hold the client’s finger above a letter board or keyboard, ostensibly to brace and support the client’s pointing or key-pressing movements, but not to produce them. Clients who had never spoken in their lives were sometimes found to produce lengthy typed expressions this way, at a level of detail and grammatical precision that was miraculous. Studies of FC soon discovered, however, that when separate questions were addressed (over headphones) to the facilitator and the client, those heard only by the facilitator were the ones being answered. Facilitators commonly expressed no sense at all that they were producing the communications, and instead they attributed the messages to their clients. Their strong belief that FC would work, along with the conviction that the client was indeed a competent agent whose communications merely needed to be facilitated, led to a breakdown in their experience of conscious will for their own actions (Twachtman-Cullen, 1997: Wegner, Fuller, & Sparrow, 2003). Without a perception that one’s own thought is the exclusive cause of one’s action, it is possible to lose authorship entirely and attribute it even to an unlikely outside agent.

Another example of the exclusivity principle at work is provided in studies of the subliminal priming of agents (Dijksterhuis, Preston, Wegner, & Aarts, 2004). Participants in these experiments were asked to react to letter strings on a computer screen by judging them to be words or not-and to do this as quickly as possible in a race with the computer. On each trial in this lexical decision task, the screen showing the letters went blank either when the person pressed the response button, or automatically at a short interval (about 400-650 ms) after the presentation. This made it unclear whether the person had answered correctly and turned off the display or whether the computer did it, and on each trial the person was asked to guess who did it. In addition, however, and without participants’ prior knowledge, the word I or me or some other word was very briefly presented on each trial. This presentation lasted only 17 ms, and was both preceded and followed by random letter masks-such that participants reported no awareness of these presentations. The subliminal presentations influenced judgments of authorship. On trials with the subliminal priming of a first-person singular pronoun, participants more often judged that they had beaten the computer. They were influenced by the unconscious priming of self to attribute an ambiguous action to their own will. In a related study, participants were subliminally primed on some trials with the thought of an agent that was not the self-God. Among those participants who professed a personal belief in God, this prime reduced the causal attribution of the action to self. Apparently, the decision of whether self is the cause of an action is heavily influenced by the unconscious accessibility of self versus nonself agents. This suggests that the exclusivity of conscious thought as a cause of action can be influenced even by the unconscious accessibility of possible agents outside the self.

The theory of apparent mental causation, in sum, rests on the notion that our experience of conscious will is normally a construction. When the right timing, content, and context link our thought and our action, this construction yields a feeling of authorship of the action. It seems that we did it. However, this feeling is an inference we draw from the juxtaposition of our thought and action, not a direct perception of causal agency. Thus, the feeling can be wrong. Although the experience of will can become the basis of our guilt and our pride, and can signal to us whether we feel responsible for action in the moral sense as well, it is merely an estimate of the causal influence of our thoughts on our actions, not a direct readout of such influence. Apparent mental causation nevertheless is the basis of our feeling that we are controllers.[vi]

There is a baffling problem about what consciousness is for. It is equally baffling, moreover, that the function of consciousness should remain so baffling. It seems extraordinary that despite the pervasiveness and familiarity of consciousness in our lives, we are uncertain in what way (if at all) it is actually indispensable to us. (Frankfurt, 1988, p. 162) What is consciousness for, if perfectly unconscious, indeed subjectless, information processing is in principle capable of achieving all the ends for which conscious minds were supposed to exist? (Dennett, 1981, p. 13)[vii]

It appears that the meta-language of an agency of self is not some kind of self-evident ‘truth’ but is a kind of imagined self that gets surmised ex post facto and gets set up like symbols; the symbols of individualism, free will and self. These symbols, much like ‘A as B’, are substituted metaphorically as a condensation of a plurality of unconscious processes and get repeated metonymically over the course of a lifetime to reinforce their significance. The symbols are the signifiers and the signified, as place holders of other signifiers, of meaning, individualism, free will and self, are taken over from the as-a-whole, the worlding given from logos. The terms of speech uncover the meta-language of agency drawn from a vast pool, language. Language is not memorized word for word starting from infancy. It is intuited as world and made possible as the event of revelation (speech) in the openness of logos.

The impossible ‘real’ of Lacan interrupts symbol and imagination. The ‘real’ is not yet a symbolic and imagined ‘other’; as Lacan illustrates, “a knock on the door that interrupts a dream” or the absolute alterity of the other from Levinas that interrupts totality. The ‘real’ is ineffable, absolute indeterminacy, the incessant buzz of anticorrelation, the ‘not’ of relation – chaos. Only after do we mirror, represent, relate, situate as symbols not-present-at-hand but instrumentally given from linguistic phonemes and ‘understand’ meaning or lack thereof. However, the insufficiency of symbolic dissemination, difference and deterrence (differance) always requires a supplement. Desire as lack of primordial symbiosis is the basis for the uncanny.

‘Canny’ is from the Anglo-Saxon root ‘ken’ which means knowledge, understanding, cognizance, mental perception, one’s ken. Thus the uncanny is something outside one’s familiar knowledge or perceptions.

The Uncanny (Ger. Das Unheimliche – “the opposite of what is familiar”) is a Freudian concept of an instance where something can be familiar, yet foreign at the same time, resulting in a feeling of it being uncomfortably strange or uncomfortably familiar.

Because the uncanny is familiar, yet strange, it often creates cognitive dissonance within the experiencing subject due to the paradoxical nature of being attracted to, yet repulsed by an object at the same time. This cognitive dissonance often leads to an outright rejection of the object, as one would rather reject than rationalize.

Freud draws on a wholly different element of the story, namely, “the idea of being robbed of one’s eyes,” as the “more striking instance of uncanniness” in the tale.

Freud goes on, for the remainder of the essay, to identify uncanny effects that result from instances of “repetition of the same thing,” including incidents wherein one becomes lost and accidentally retraces one’s steps, and instances wherein random numbers recur, seemingly meaningfully (here Freud may be said to be prefiguring the concept that Jung would later refer to as synchronicity). He also discusses the uncanny nature of Otto Rank’s concept of the “double.”

Basically, the Uncanny is what unconsciously reminds us of our own Id, our forbidden and thus repressed impulses perceived as a threatening force by our super-ego ridden with oedipal guilt as it fears symbolic castration by punishment for deviating from societal norms. Thus, the items and individuals that we project our own repressed impulses upon become a most uncanny threat to us, uncanny monsters and freaks akin to fairy-tale folk-devils, and subsequently often become scapegoats we blame for all sorts of perceived miseries, calamities, and maladies.[viii]

The uncanny, the familiar strange, endless dyads of is and isn’t are not quieted by fetish, the desire for the other represented as object, as absolute knowledge. The reflection in the mirror of self determining Spirit is thought in Zizek’s description of “The Most Sublime of Hysterics”

Lacan’s formula that Hegel is ‘the most sublime of hysterics’ should be interpreted along these lines: the hysteric, by his very questioning, ‘burrows a hole in the Other’; his desire is experienced precisely as the Other’s desire. Which is to say, the hysterical subject is fundamentally a subject who poses himself a question all the while presupposing that the Other has the key to the answer, that the Other knows the secret. But this question posed to the Other is in fact resolved, in the dialectical process, by a reflexive turn – namely, by regarding the question as its own answer.[ix]

Here, desire for the other has become absolute knowledge. The uncanny has become its own answer and thus, transformed, synthesized in the essence of its question. It is for this reason that the System was not finished by Hegel and never will be. The uncanny distends and distorts existentially, -ek-sisting. Semiosis can only defer and detain; the metaphysical desire for absolutes imagined, -in-sisting (distinguished from con-sisting) as language. The uncanny hides its concealment of error as mystery; as what does not show itself in showing, in aletheia. Only when the question of the ‘there’ of being can be heard as if for the first time, the ghost of logos, can the uncanny Other be heard in myth.

According to Hesiod, Eros is: “…the fairest of the deathless gods; he un­strings the limbs [makes the limbs go limp] and subdues both mind and sensible thought in the breasts of all gods and all men.” Hesiod tells us that Eros was one of the oldest deities, born from Chaos alongside Gaia (the Earth) and Tartarus (the Underworld).

Eros, the non-generative, without arche, parentless God from Hesiod is neither divine or mortal.

At the beginning there was only Chaos, Night (Nyx), Darkness (Erebus), and the Abyss (Tartarus). Earth, the Air and Heaven had no existence. Firstly, blackwinged Night laid a germless egg in the bosom of the infinite deeps of Darkness, and from this, after the revolution of long ages, sprang the graceful Love (Eros) with his glittering golden wings, swift as the whirlwinds of the tempest. He mated in the deep Abyss with dark Chaos, winged like himself, and thus hatched forth our race, which was the first to see the light.[x]

Later Eros is spoken of as the child of night (Nyx). He is also spoken of as the son of Aphrodite,

[Hera addresses Athene :] We must have a word with Aphrodite. Let us go together and ask her to persuade her boy [Eros], if that is possible, to loose an arrow at Aeetes’ daughter, Medea of the many spells, and make her fall in love with Iason . . .[xi]

He [Eros] smites maids’ breasts with unknown heat, and bids the very gods leave heaven and dwell on earth in borrowed forms.[xii]

Once, when Venus’son [Cupid, aka Eros] was kissing her, his quiver dangling down, a jutting arrow, unbeknown, had grazed her breast. She pushed the boy away. In fact the wound was deeper than it seemed, though unperceived at first. [And she became] enraptured by the beauty of a man [Adonis].[xiii]

Eros drove Dionysos mad for the girl [Aura] with the delicious wound of his arrow, then curving his wings flew lightly to Olympos. And the god roamed over the hills scourged with a greater fire.[xiv]

Socrates tells us of Eros,

“What then is Love?” I asked; “Is he mortal?” “No.” “What then?” “As in the former instance, he is neither mortal nor immortal, but in a mean between the two.” “What is he, Diotima?” “He is a great spirit (daimon), and like all spirits he is intermediate between the divine and the mortal.” “And what,” I said, “is his power?” “He interprets,” she replied, “between gods and men, conveying and taking across to the gods the prayers and sacrifices of men, and to men the commands and replies of the gods; he is the mediator who spans the chasm which divides them, and therefore in him all is bound together, and through him the arts of the prophet and the priest, their sacrifices and mysteries and charms, and all, prophecy and incantation, find their way. For God mingles not with man; but through Love. all the intercourse, and converse of god with man, whether awake or asleep, is carried on. The wisdom which understands this is spiritual; all other wisdom, such as that of arts and handicrafts, is mean and vulgar.
…
He is by nature neither mortal nor immortal, but alive and flourishing at one moment when he is in plenty, and dead at another moment, and again alive by reason of his father’s nature. But that which is always flowing in is always flowing out, and so he is never in want and never in wealth; and, further, he is in a mean between ignorance and knowledge. The truth of the matter is this: No god is a philosopher. or seeker after wisdom, for he is wise already; nor does any man who is wise seek after wisdom. Neither do the ignorant seek after Wisdom. For herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself: he has no desire for that of which he feels no want.” “But-who then, Diotima,” I said, “are the lovers of wisdom, if they are neither the wise nor the foolish?” “A child may answer that question,” she replied; “they are those who are in a mean between the two; Love is one of them. For wisdom is a most beautiful thing, and Love is of the beautiful; and therefore Love is also a philosopher: or lover of wisdom, and being a lover of wisdom is in a mean between the wise and the ignorant.[xv]

In the second century a story is told of Eros and Psyche,

The story tells of the struggle for love and trust between Eros and Psyche. Aphrodite was jealous of the beauty of mortal princess Psyche, as men were leaving her altars barren to worship a mere human woman instead, and so she commanded her son Eros, the god of love, to cause Psyche to fall in love with the ugliest creature on earth. But instead, Eros falls in love with Psyche himself and spirits her away to his home. Their fragile peace is ruined by a visit from Psyche’s jealous sisters, who cause Psyche to betray the trust of her husband. Wounded, Eros leaves his wife, and Psyche wanders the Earth, looking for her lost love. Eventually she approaches Aphrodite and asks for her help. Aphrodite imposes a series of difficult tasks on Psyche, which she is able to achieve by means of supernatural assistance.  After successfully completing these tasks, Aphrodite relents and Psyche becomes immortal to live alongside her husband Eros. Together they had a daughter, Voluptas or Hedone (meaning physical pleasure, bliss).

In Greek mythology, Psyche was the deification of the human soul. She was portrayed in ancient mosaics as a goddess with butterfly wings (because psyche was also the Ancient Greek word for ‘butterfly’). The Greek word psyche literally means “soul, spirit, breath, life or animating force”.[xvi]


[i] Hesiod, “Theogony”, Drew A. Hyland;John Panteleimon Manoussakis. Heidegger and the Greeks: Interpretive Essays (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 9). Kindle Edition.

[ii] William J. Richardson;Toward the Future of Truth, Heidegger and the Greeks: Interpretive Essays (Studies in Continental Thought). Kindle Edition.

[iii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_of_desire

[iv] A Very Brief Introduction to Lacan, Prepared by Professor Stephen Ross, http://web.uvic.ca/~saross/lacan.html

[v] Ran R. Hassin;James S. Uleman;John A. Bargh. The New Unconscious (Oxford Series in Social Cognition and Social Neuroscience) (pp. 45-46). Kindle Edition.

[vi] Drew A. Hyland;John Panteleimon Manoussakis. Heidegger and the Greeks: Interpretive Essays (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 97). Kindle Edition.

[vii] Ran R. Hassin;James S. Uleman;John A. Bargh. The New Unconscious (Oxford Series in Social Cognition and Social Neuroscience) (p. 52). Kindle Edition.

[viii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Uncanny

[ix] The Most Sublime of Hysterics: Hegel with Lacan, Slavoj Zizek, translated by Rex Butler and Scott Stephens, http://www.lacan.com/zizlacan2.htm

[x] Aristophanes, Birds, lines 690-699. (Translation by Eugene O’Neill, Jr., Perseus Digital Library; translation modified.)

[xi] Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 3. 25 ff – a Greek epic of the 3rd century B.C.

[xii] Seneca, Phaedra 290 ff

[xiii] Ovid, Metamorphoses 10. 525 ff

[xiv] Nonnus, Dionysiaca 48. 470 ff – a Greek epic of the 5th century AD

[xv] Symposium, Plato, http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/symposium.html

[xvi] http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/bl/bl_cupidandpsyche.htm

Jesus and Postmodernism

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With regard to more comments from this:

Clark,

“I think it unfair to say LDS think the apostasy is due to Greek thought. Many people (including myself) think that one major problem is applying Greek absolutism to the concept of the Hebrew God. But the range of LDS views on apostasy is much more complex than it appears at first glance.”

Thanks for your comments. I found the links you cited interesting. Certainly, there appears to be a rich plurality of opinions on the apostasy spoken of in LDS circles. First, I would like to comment on some quotes from the article by Dave Banack (link):

“The simplest form of the narrative is that there was an original church from which something essential (doctrine, scripture, authority, priesthood, the Spirit) was lost.”

…

“Here’s the problem. Scholarship in the 20th century suggests that the original condition of Christianity in the decades following Christ’s death — the very beginning of the early church — was not any sort of essential unity but instead was radically diverse. In other words, there never was an early Christian Church, there were, at the very beginning, many different churches (and yes, I recognize that the term “church” is somewhat anachronistic in this early context, but that is sort of the point).”

…

“At some point you get early enough that the evidence no longer argues for an apostasy, it argues for the failure of an original church (from which the Christianity of later decades or centuries apostatized from) to ever be established or organized.”

“The Not-So-Great Apostasy”, February 8, 2012, By Dave Banack, (link)

I am in total agreement with the premise of this article. From my readings as well, there was no original early church. There were many sects oriented from Judaic to Helenistic to Roman and political to practical (in your words – “on the pragmatic side of the Atlantic”) to mystical. Even the texts whether canonical or not have lots of influences from and against these sects. The authorship of these texts also has major questions. It seems to me that reading a “proper origin” (arche), original church, is wishful thinking – or perhaps, ‘arche-thinking’ that must rely heavily on faith in divine authorship and not so much on the actual texts and archaeologies.

I think you may find this link interesting.

With regard to your belief in Hellenistic ‘absolutism’ and Hebrew and Dave Banck’s statement,

“Myth 2: The apostasy was caused by the hellenization of Christianity or the incorporation of Greek philosophy and culture into the teachings of the early church. [This happened a century too late to be a causal explanation.]”

I agree with Dave Banck’s assertion that the ‘apostasy’ cannot be attributed to this (as I think there was no original ‘church’ to be apostate from). However, I would suggest that you are correct that there was an incorporation of Hellenism into Christianity that vastly effected later history, I agree with Heidegger and Nietzsche that the Latin world misunderstood Aristotle on the issue of ‘absolutism’. Aristotle was not an ‘absolutist’. Maybe you could posit that idea from Parmenides and the Eleatic school (although that may be more problematic than at first glance). Plato and Aristotle argued against this school (The Parmenides, Physics). Heidegger’s earlier writings did accuse Plato of thinking the Idea in terms of a, what you might refer to as ‘absolute’, nous (mind, ratio – rationality) that was based on the reification of presence. However, even on this, he changed his mind later.

From my reading, I think the ‘absolutism’ of Judaism did get thought in terms of the reification of presence Heidegger refers to as “Platonism” (Neo-Platonism, Latin, Roman, early church fathers, etc.). In particular, I see this at the end of the first century (which is what I think Dave Banck alluded to) when the gospel of John and 1st, 2nd and 3rd John show up (90 to 120CE). Consider this,

“By the beginning of the Common Era, the Logos was a deeply felt and intricate part of Greek thought despite its mystical and sometimes confusing machinations. It was well established that the Logos was a divinely felt presence of God, but no philosopher could find a more practical implementation for how the Logos actually mattered to humans and their lives. The man who would provide this meaning and give personified substance to the Logos at the beginning of the Common Era was Philo.

Philo of Alexandria (30 BCE – 45 CE) introduced the concept of the Logos as an allegorical force of Yahweh. He was a Jew of the dispersion, and observed the mitzvot, yet like a lot of cosmopolitan Alexandrians of the time, worshipped the Greek gods too. Philo believed that the two worlds were not irreconciliable and the Logos was his attempt at melding Yahwism with the Greek vision of God.”

…

“Philo never explained clearly what his Logos was, but it often took on the form of the essence or divine nature of God. Philo’s Word was extremely popular among Jews and non-Jews alike, successfully splitting God into multiple personifications that pagan worshippers would later refine further from Bi- to Trinitarian concepts that we are familiar with today. We first see the application of the philosophy of the Logos in the prologue of the Gospel of John which begins by proclaiming Philo’s triumph:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God …. The same was in the beginning with God … and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father [God].” (John 1:1-14)”

While I am not in so much agreement with this article’s notion of Greek thinking I think it is correct concerning the Greek influence of the writer of 1 John. The epistle argues against the Ebionites that were a more Judaic branch of Christianity. They thought that Jesus did not exist before Mary and the writer of 1 John seemed to want to use the synthesis of Philo between Hellenism and Hebrew to establish the divinity of Jesus by associating Jesus as the logos.

The conversion of logos into a Being named Jesus not only misunderstood Plato, Aristotle, Heraclitus (that first used the notion of the logos) but it also made Yahweh into Being from Hebrew thought. The misunderstanding of Logos as nous is central to Heidegger and Nietzsche (The Birth of Tragedy). Moreover, this confusion of Being with logos is essential for logocentrism and Derrida. Speech (rationality = consciousness of the speaker, presence, the secondary position of writing, etc.) is the ‘word of God’. I do not think postmodernism can be understood without thinking from (as against) this deification of presence even on this side of the Atlantic. This is not to favor mystification but to listen attentively to what is not said…cannot be said from correctness.

“Nietzsche has obviously some Mormon dislike due to his self-labeling himself as the anti-Christ. However I think among Mormon thinkers the view is much more positive. Many of Nietzsche’s criticisms of Christianity parallel a lot of Mormon criticisms of traditional Christianity (including the Greek Absolutism angle). Furth http://timesandseasons.org/index.php/2012/02/the-not-so-great-apostasy/er I think Mormon concepts of development make Nietzsche’s criticism of charity somewhat sympathetic to Mormons. Even Nietzsche’s concept of the superman has parallels to Mormon conceptions of deification. However there are some big differences. Nietzsche elevates power and the seeking after power in a way Mormons fundamentally reject. Further the existence of God in Mormon thought obviously undermines much of what Nietzsche does from a Mormon perspective. I think Nietzsche can have a positive place for Christians by helping clean away false ideas within Christianity.”

“The Antichrist” was NOT Nietzsche’s “self-labeling himself as the anti-Christ”. It is Nietzsche’s criticism of historical Christianity (“Jesus was the only true Christian”) – the slave morality inherited from Judaism and made into a fine art by orthodoxy. He found this extremely anti-Greek. He would NOT have excluded the LDS from this ‘slave morality’. The slave, the oppressed, the downtrodden, the care for the sick and the poor was everything Nietzsche detested in Christianity – it valued egalitarianism and democracy instead of ‘will to power’ and historically creating the master narrative (History is a tale told by the victors). Modern day neocons love Nietzsche for these reasons (I call them chest-beaters). I think the neocons are even more detestable than the slave morality of Christianity as they talk the talk but dare not walk the walk but that is another essay.

I understand the physical embodiment that LDS has for God but almost all scholars I can think of think that the antichrist and the Übermensch are not physical beings but refer to the death of God – the historical demise of the meta-language of presence, divinity, rationality, etc. and the ‘resurrection’ of another reading of the Greeks or ‘creation ex-nihilo’ (viz. nihilism).

For Nietzsche it was not about false ideas in Christianity but that Christianity ITSELF is false -in essence. It cannot be ‘redeemed’ by some kind of straining process between true and false ideas. It essentially sets the stage on which true and false can even happen AND it does it exhaustively from heresy and apostasy because Jesus WAS the only ‘true’ Christian. I think that homogenizing the text until it is sort of a new-age’y affirmation of LDS or pragmatic reading is a logocentric, canonical reaffirmation of the Greeks, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Derrida and postmodernism.

“As for your last paragraph I’m not entirely sure what you mean. One way to read Derrida is that we never can escape metaphysics. In this view the postmodern move really isn’t a move out of modernism but a recognition of the crisis of the modern world yet simultaneously how we are trapped within it. Thus Derrida’s various impossibilities.”

I agree that postmodernism is a reaction against modernism. First, modernism itself was a reaction against conservative realism (rationalism, Enlightenment, materialism and positivism – the violence of progression). Postmodernism was a reaction to modernism, structuralism, collectivism, positivism, realism, formalism and metaphysics. Yes, we can never ‘escape metaphysics’ but that does not mean it is a sort of Sartre-ean ‘no exit’ situation or a mere repetition of metaphysics – it is not an unqualified affirmation of metaphysics – there is an essential difference (differance – spatially defer and temporally deter) . It is very much like Heidegger suggesting that we have not yet learned to listen. If we simply listen to meta-language (as in the terms I previously used… resurrection, creation ex-nihilo, redeemed) and believe it as the history of ‘truth’ there is no need for postmodernism – just take the tradition as is. The ‘truths’ and their essential (essence-ing) falsities, heresies, apostacies, etc.) which must always accompany them in bi-polar oppositions (even if held as such in aufhebung…synthesis) have become impotent to the point of being ‘strange’ in postmodernism. Of course, you may think that postmodernism is not strange at all but only yet another affirmation of metaphysics (in whatever way you want to re-structuralize, synthesize, ‘pragma-cize’, winnow, etc.) but that is not an exercise in postmodernism it is only a pre-postmodern perspective dressed up in the words of postmodernism. What I was trying to say in the last paragraph was that you COULD do that in an ironic way and perhaps not simply ignore the text of postmodernism but to simply make postmodernism as part and parcel of analytic philosophy or LDS or whatever loses the radical trace that uncannily undoes the text in its inescapability.

I do not think Levinas is capable of being understood without understanding the setting adrift of metaphysics in postmodernism, Derrida, Heidegger, Nietzsche and the other reading of the Greeks.

“I should note I reject the label postmodernism but that’s primarily because of all the idiocy done under the term the last 30 years. (I don’t think Derrida ever accepted the label either)”

I think Derrida had the problem with the ‘deconstruction’ label.

I don’t think this changes what truth is. The way I read Derrida is with a strong realism and acceptance of truth. However truth is primarily the selection by greater powers (the Nietzschean move) yet trapped within a kind of perspectivism. But some statements and views can survive in a relatively unscathed way as one moves between contexts. (The graftings) So I think we have to be careful with irony. I reject the way someone like Rorty took Heidegger, Derrida and Dewey for instance. Interestingly Rorty’s wife was LDS – one of my philosophy professors in college actually home taught him. (Home teaching is a month visit within the Church to ensure people don’t have any problems they need help with, to fellowship them, and to give a short devotional message – I’ve always wished I could have heard some of those discussions with Rorty.

I think Derrida did not accept ‘truth’ or ‘realism’. It seems like you are searching for an analogous way of thinking about it but I am not sure the analogy holds – it seems to reverse the thought. I do not the ‘grafting’ is from one truth to another but between signifiers that simply point to other signifiers without any ‘thread of truth’.

To write means to graft. It’s the same word. The saying of the thing is restored to its being-grafted. The graft is not something that happens to the properness of the thing. There is no more any thing than there is any original text. (Derrida, 1972a: 389)

The graft is not a ‘proper’ understanding that leads to another ‘proper’ understanding of the text.

BTW – I agree that Christianity corrupted Greek thinking just as Greek thinking corrupted Christian thinking. As I discussed in my rejoinder to Bill Vallicella I think the fundamental error of traditional Christian theology was to see one and the same “object” for the questions of Greek philosophy (the absolute) and the questions of Hebrew faith (the interventionist God).

Agree. However, what do you mean by “the fundamental error of traditional Christian theology”? –Does this leave room for non-traditional theology, i.e., LDS, to see different ‘objects’ for Hellenistic and Hebrew as opposed to unpacking what is meant by ‘object’?

Postmodern Mormonism?

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Interesting…I had no idea there was a LDS faithful, continental strain at BYU. Of course, I would have believed there were continental philosophers there but without any necessary allegiance to Mormonism as Catholic Universities like DePaul have fantastic programs in continental philosophy but from my personal experience there I knew none that thought of themselves as Catholics much less do apologetics for it.

I did read some of the links you pointed me towards. It does appear that these thinkers are comfortable with Heidegger, Derrida Levinas, etc. – I did not see anything on Nietzsche though – hmm. What would LDS philosophers think of Nietzsche – he did seem to have a lot of criticisms of Christianity and postmodernists seemed to have found him essential, Heidegger in particular…and Derrida.

This brings up another point. I also read that these LDS philosophers think of the apostate church (everyone not LDS) as rooted in the paganism of Greek thought. I certainly understand the ‘Platonism’ (Neo-Platonic) of the Latin world. However, Heidegger thought of this as a corruption of the Greeks and I agree. I am sure I need not remind you of his warnings of onto-theologizing. Any kind of other start from the Greeks would certainly not be a mere replay of the history of metaphysics. Heidegger even gave up the word ‘Being’ to make sure others knew he was not making Being, God. This lapse back into the reifying of presence (meta-language of conscious, Heidegger’s early thinking of Plato’s Ideas, substance, etc.) made the nous (ratio, reason) absolute, infinite, omniscient, omnipresent, etc. -the logos, and produced the unifying canon of violence that Derrida wrote so much about. I suppose I do not think Christians were corrupt because of Greek thinking but Greek thinking was corrupted by Christianity. I think this is the direction of Heidegger and Derrida for sure. Nietzsche went much further than this in thinking of decadency, the ignoble, the ingenious manipulation of Christian sheep by their Sheppard priests, etc. (The Antichrist, Beyond Good and Evil, Zarathustra, etc.). It seems to me the whole idea of continental postmodern thinkers is that God is dead – we have totally played out that metaphysical hand historically speaking.

Certainly, we know from Of Grammatology (and Gadamer) that writing ‘supplements’ speech by overturning and playing with it from the margins. I suppose this could give one liberty to find other readings of the text that are equally absurd (from the point of view of truth) as the canonical reading. However, if the reading once again ends up affirming logocentrism wouldn’t this iteration of the text simply ignore deconstruction altogether and simply once again affirm meta-theology? I suppose it could be done in irony with postmodernism in mind. However, I fail to see how anyone could take LDS seriously if this is the case. In any case, I found it very interesting that the discussions I read were not fatally shot done by the ‘chosen’ as would have been in fundamentalism…maybe, it is so far out they do not bother with it. Anyway, let me know if there are any postmodern, Mormon congregations in Boulder Colorado – would love to check it out.

More Comments on Derrida and Mormonism

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With regard to Clark’s latest comment…

“I think when one is going through the texts doing phenomenology that the phenomena ends up being the same.”

I suppose this makes me think that Derrida might think about the ‘same’ here as the im-possiblity of the ‘same’ as he does of the im-possiblity of justice. We must decide in this impossibility as if justice were possible. I suppose we must think of irreconcilables in terms of phenomena; the impossibility of a meta-language to ‘justify’ the ‘same’ and yet we must. In “The Gift of Death” Derrida writes about the “messianic without the messiah”. He calls this the secret. Apotheosis arrives as the impossible event without theosis. He thinks of death in this fashion – the gift of death is its event in the face of its impossibility. I think the almost instinctive need to think the ‘same’ as the event of meta-language is a similar ‘gift’.

I must confess I am a bit curious about you and this site…in light of what you know about the impossibility of metaphysics ( a meta-language), how do you come by Mormonism and metaphysics? I have had interesting theological discussions with Mormons but none have ever tried to think Mormonism from post-modernism…seems to me like it is a bit like a curious twilight zone episode. Is this a case of you must? If so, I wonder how your brethren respond to this approach. Is there an official church position regarding alternate philosophical approaches to Mormonism? In orthodoxy, it seems to me this would simply be deemed heresy.

More Thoughts on Heidegger and Levinas

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With regard to this:

Clark,

Thanks for your comments. I understand your comment about older writings and certainly experience the draught of Lethe, the ever forgetful retreat from Mnemosyne, at the ancient age of 55!

I agree with much of your thought on Levinas. I also have written and thought about the middle voice in Greek and Heidegger, Levinas, and Derrida (kairos).

With regard to this,

“I think part of this is how one reads Levinas but I think Levinas also reads Heidegger a bit unfairly. (Understandably so, all things considered) To me it is much more a difference of focus and emphasis rather than denying a phenomena. To the degree ones explication of the phenomena is always conditioned by ones stance then of course you are right. To the degree there is a phenomena then I think they are getting at the same thing.”

-yes, the Nazi thing was a major ‘understandable’ difference but I think for Levinas the difference is much more fundamental and somewhat ambiguous. Levinas was fully aware that Heidegger’s early work was focused on ontology and the Greek hermeneutic. He also knew that aletheia was the alpha-privative of lethe (forgetfulness, concealment). However, as ‘phenomenology’ a certain kind of behind the scenes understanding of ‘kind’ accompanies closedness viz. the neutrality of phenomenon. The ‘it’ of phenomenon, even as concealed, already ushers in a disposition that Levinas would not want to mediate away. ‘It’ takes on a certain gnosis that already determines what is to be thought. As you know Levinas would not have any issue with the reconstitution of metaphysics – not as the privileging of the present but as the radical interruption of the Other. Heidegger’s ontology and less Ereignis still fashions a site for the ‘there’ of being that unifies (hen) as thrown and appropriates from many (polumeres – what cannot come to presence). However, this is not the Other of Levinas. With Heidegger we favor the ‘it’ over the ‘he’ or ‘she’ and according to Levinas lose the an-archic sense of Ethics. Phenomena (phainomenon – “that which appears or is seen”) is already self-referential (moreover, Kant understood noumenon, neut. passive of prp. of noein “to apprehend”) and made evident in polemus. Hegel as well thinks from neutrality as Truth viz. the Logic…perhaps, nous-centric. Levinas does not have to be believed or thought as sensible. However, I see a kind of maturity of Kierkegaard’s break with objective certainty and absolute passivity in the face of ‘my eternal happiness’ (for K.) in Levinas. Postmodernity has made the break with the metaphysics of presence but seems to me to languish in its un-deconstructed canon of neutrality. I think Derrida was fully aware of this and was fascinated with the Other. He knew the anthropomorphic was again entangled in the nous of the violence of the light but I think he could only articulate the rupture of Levinas in his later writings. The Hegelian ‘not’ neutralizes its antecedent. The Other has a face and interrupts my narcissism (and world historical Spirit).

I am not that familiar with Peirce but just curious, what do you make of Levinas’ third other and Peirce?

From the little I know I would think that Derrida does adopt semiotics. I am writing a post on Heidegger and Lacan with regard to some of these issues. I started including some of Peirce’s thought in it but realized I did not know enough about him and took it out. I would love to hear some of your observations about the post when it is done with regard to Peirce.

 

Santorum’s Speech to CPAC

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Santorum stated today that rights come from above (God) not man. He went on to say that health care is not a right given by God but by man (government – Obama). Let’s forget the fact that Jesus said he came for the sick and not the well and spent most of his time on Earth healing the sick and telling others to care for the sick and poor. So if health care is not from God but man and therefore, we should repeal ‘Obama-Care’ does this mean that we should have no health care? I do not think Santorum would suggest that we just let people die on the street without needed health care. So, as all good conservatives, he must think that the ‘free market’ should take care of the sick. Well, is the ‘free market’ a right given by God? If so, then I think that the ‘free market’ as a right given by God would mean that health care really is a right given by God viz. the ‘free-market’. So God does give us the right to health care but not by man by the ‘free market’. Correct me if I am missing something but isn’t this rhetoric extremely confused? And yet, all the little automatons today cheered vehemently as if they understood exactly what he was talking about – as though it made perfect ‘sense’. My question is where does the ‘sense’ reside, in the rhetoric? I would love for someone to tell me how the ‘sense’ resides in the rhetoric. From what I can gleam the ‘sense’ is not in the rhetoric but in the absolute hatred of the diabolic Obama administration. When a group hates they are bonded by that strong emotion. However, appealing to others that do not hate to join your ‘common sense’ is not effective. Santorum’s speech had no solution for health care only hatred for Obama. The choice is clear solutions or hatred.

Thoughts on Heidegger and Levinas

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A few comments from this thread…

“The Other is not constituted by the self, as Levinas haves it, but the inverse.”

There is no ‘constitution’ of the self from the Other in Levinas. The self is a historical and/or personal retreat from the absolute alterity of the other. The self is a kind of violence that totalizes the other into a representation (ex., from the self), a plastic cast of the face of the other, and thus, brings the Other into the light of rational (ratio), conceptual relatedness that ‘is’, ontologizes, the Other (the tyranny of the same). Levinas wants to think otherwise than being. Being is the archaic violence that effaces the other. Levinas thinks that ontology imagines that the time of the other and my time are commensurate and therefore, levels the Other off into the same – not as identity but as kind, i.e., differences are certainly allowed but the essence of the difference assumes a prior basis for comparison, the ratio of nous, an archical (originary) temporalizing that I and Other exist and move and have our being in. Levinas thought the Other was anachronous to my time, a time not my time, not commensurate in any way to me. He thought that retreat from the face of the other was history and why metaphysics failed. It failed because it lost the Other, transcendence, it made the other into the said, the idolatry of the image and the word.

“Now it is silly to argue that ethics is ontologically prior to ontology (because then ethics simply becomes ontology by another name). Levinas should have argued for the ethical priority of ethics.”

For Levinas ethics is the interruption of ontology. Ethics cannot be a prior ontology to ontology. Ontology is a sort of prison that can only ‘see’ within itself – the originary narcissus. If the Other is a moment of Being or circumscribed in the light of Being then ethics will always, already be pre-understood as a positive relation among beings, an authentic mode of being-with. This ‘already understood’ levels off beings as equal in an essential way, as ontologically identical, known and understood in essence (arche). What gets lost in this is radical difference, perhaps in the direction of Derrida’s ‘differance’ but with an important exception – leveling off favors the neutral. ‘It’ ‘is’ already understood. Essence as ontologically identical reduces the radical alterity of the ‘he’ or ‘she’ into an ‘it’.

Signs, semiology, as endlessly referential, must essentially, undo the knot they tie as they tie it – thus the trace of ‘differance’. The time of signs as Blanchot (Levinas’ mentor) thought is il ya, the there is, it is dead time – it neutralizes the other as another sign, an it, and therefore, loses radical alterity of him or her – it makes the saying the said. All the while the Dread, from an ontological point of view, that must be retreated from is the non-being of the Other, the other than being.

I do not think that you can ‘arrive at Levinas’ as ‘saying the same thing as Heidegger’ (as ‘without being aware of it’). I think that would be an equivalence that would totally miss the direction of Levinas’ thought. Perhaps you may think he is wrong but his work will not allow a similarity to Heideggerian mitsein or an elevation of Heideggerian ethics (whatever that would be).

“The Other is an eternal Fuhrer.”

The Fuhrer controls within the same, it is the System, light, ontology – it is the reduction of the other to the same. To think the same as identical to the Other is to do exactly what Levinas tells us that ontology does. The violence of the pure race is based on absolute, unquestioned knowing of the kind of being of the ‘pure’ and the ‘impure’. This kind of knowing can never be possible in Levinas’ notion of the Other without totalizing the Other under the tyranny of the same.

 

What about Paul’s Religious Freedom?

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A letter from Paul:

My religion believes in real ‘pro life’. We do not know when sub-dividing cells become human life but we do believe that cellular division at conception is NOT yet a ‘human life’ that merits legal protections. As such, our religious freedom has been trampled on by the fake ‘pro-lifers’ that mandated the government could NOT pay for abortions. The fake religion has trampled on the rights of our true religion using the power of the state. Since we know that 18 year olds are certainly human we also had our rights trampled by the state when we had to pay for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars with our tax dollars. We were forced by the state to sin against our pro-life values by paying for wars that killed our children. We also believe that criminals are human beings and capital punishment is murder by the state. Again, our tax dollars are spent on the much more expensive undertaking of the jurisprudence of capital punishment. We also believe that the human being that is alive can decide to end their life. The state will not allow euthanasia and has once again forced itself on us. The latest controversy about contraception is not really about religious freedom; it is about one arrogant religion legislating with the power the state what other religions must do.

                                                                                                                                                                                     Paul

I guess what we need to think about from Paul’s letter is that one religion’s ‘religious freedom’ may be another religion’s state oppression of religious freedom. I suppose there is a valid reason for the separation of church and state as is abundantly clear from history.

Down the Rabbit Hole

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Rather often I feel like listening to the Republicans is like living in Alice’s wonderland. Here are some examples:

Who created more debt Bush or Obama?

The opiate truth: Obama increased the national debt vastly more than any other president.

The non-opiate truth:

The Graph – Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is non-partisan.

Here are the latest absolute numbers on the debt increase between President Bush and President Obama:

Bush debt increase: 85%

Obama debt increase: 44%

From January 20, 2001 to January 20, 2009 the national debt increased from $5,727,776,738,304.64 to $10,626,877,048,913.08. For those that still believe in arithmetic this is an 85% increase in the debt over the Bush administration’s term ((10,626,877,048,913.08 / 5,727,776,738,304.64) * 100) = 185% or an 85% increase).

From January 20, 2009 to February 3, 2012 the national debt increased from $10,626,877,048,913.08 to $15,330,778,119,850.60. This is a 44% increase in debt over President Obama’s term ((15,330,778,119,850.60 / 10,626,877,048,913.08) * 100) = 143% or a 43% increase).

Don’t take my word for it, check it out on the US Treasury Department site.

Additionally, there is the discretionary and non-discretionary part of the budget. Discretionary spending is annual spending that the congress and the president have to deal with every year; non-discretionary is mandatory, multiyear spending that has already been committed to by previous administrations (i.e., like food stamps calculated to poverty levels). The non-discretionary portion of the 2011 budget is 59%; the discretionary is 34% (reference).

What Republicans call Obama-Care has not kicked in yet but the GAO wrote a report that I have read from start to finish that claims it will take 100 billion off the budget over 10 years as compared to doing nothing (can’t cherry pick GAO reports in my opinion – ask my wife – she retired from the GAO). However, the 1 trillion dollars over 10 years of Medicare Part D that was passed by a Republican president (Bush) and Republican dominated House and Senate has already started to hit non-discretionary spending. The non-discretionary part of the budget makes up the lion’s share of the increased debt spending that you see at the end of the Bush administration. Part is this has to do with the wars, the national disasters (FEMA) and more importantly the recession. As more people go into poverty entitlements that were all previously linked to poverty numbers kick in with much higher amounts of spending – nothing to do with President Obama. This will be discussed more later in this essay.

Who created more unemployment Bush or Obama?

The opiate truth: Obama increased unemployment vastly more than any other president.

The non-opiate truth:

Bush increase in unemployment: 86%

Obama increase in unemployment: 6%

When Bush took office on January 20, 2001, the national unemployment rate was 4.2%. When he left office on January 20, 2009 and President Obama took office the national unemployment rate was 7.8%

The current unemployment rate as of January 6, 2012 is 8.3%

Doing the math, the increase during the Bush administration was (7.8 / 4.2) * 100 = 186% or a 86% increase in unemployment. For the Obama administration the math is (8.3 / 7.8) * 100 = 106% or a 6% increase in unemployment.

* Note: I have revised this based the January, 2009 unemployment number of 7.8%. President Obama took office January, 20, 2009. From the graph below you can see that the unemployment rate exploded just as he got into office. I think this explosion arguably was not due to anything President Obama did in his first few months (just 4 months later the rate was 9.4%) as the national unemployment rate does not turn on the dime but I will give the detractors the benefit of the doubt. There is still a huge difference in 86% (Bush) and 6% (Obama). If the numbers from 4 months after President Obama took office are used they work out to:

Bush administration increase in unemployment: 124%

Obama administration decrease in unemployment: 12%

Transition Date: End of May, 2009

Given this, the difference would be a 136% increase in unemployment during the Bush administration over the Obama administration.


Reference

How do Americans feel about abortion?

The opiate truth: The majority of Americans are against abortion.

The non-opiate truth:

Entitlement programs?

The opiate truth: Entitlement programs do not do anything but waste taxpayers money.

The non-opiate truth:

President Obama and food stamps?

The opiate truth: President Obama is the ‘food stamp president’.

The non-opiate truth:

Food stamps have been tied to poverty levels for decades. President Obama has nothing to do with the automatic levels that kicked in due to the recession that started in the Bush administration.

Additionally, many of the entitlement programs are tied by law to the poverty line and/or adjusted income.

Introduction to the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) Program

Interesting chart…

Even with all the additional expenses of non-discretionary entitlement programs kicking in during the Obama administration, the rate of increase of the national debt is still less that the Bush administration.

This is a graph of the debt since 1950 (click on the graphs to make them larger)…


This is the rate of increase of the debt since 1950…


Please note the difference from 2001 to 2009 and 2009 to 2011. This is Bush vs Obama

Note: The graph only uses full fiscal year data. The last fiscal year ended was September 30, 2011

Here is the data and links to the Treasury Department to verify the numbers…


The links shown above are:
Historical Debt Outstanding – Annual 2000 – 2010
Historical Debt Outstanding – Annual 1950 – 1999
The Debt to the Penny and Who Holds It
Debt Position and Activity Report
The Debt to the Penny and Who Holds It (type in Enter Beginning Date: 9/30/11)

Please, don’t vote and do drugs!