Intellectual Archaeology for Easter
Apr. 17th, 2006 03:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apollianaI wrote most of the philosophy I have hitherto written between the ages of 14 and 17. Unfortunately most of it is written in a foreign, and somewhat loopy, language. It is nevertheless possible to discern in it a variety of respectable issues--rule-following, the nature of meaning, that language is capable of generality (and the interpersonal significance of this fact), other minds, what objectivity is, and whether philosophy ought to be conducted like science.
This journal entry is from September 1996, and is the successor to "The Ethics of Chaos and Order" (which, despite the weird vocabulary there invented, I wrote while reading The Philosophy of Logical Atomism). The title of this piece is "The Sin of Synecdoche." It can be read as a treatise either on existentialism or on rule-following, and hails from a time when I did not distinguish the continental from the analytic aspects of problems. Notes in brackets are by my current self.
The most fatal ontological mistake is the taking of a part for the whole, since, as a rule, reality is always infinitely greater that what we assume it to be. If I take a portion of reality to be the whole of it, there is always the danger of encountering other portions, which will set up contradictions; these may either be resolved (partially) by expanding one's view to include the contradicting sphere, or let to fight to the deaths of ideas and men. In society, these facets are utterly interdependent, as those of a stained glass window; if one secedes, he is meaningless--and so is the rest of the window.
If one facet secedes completely, isolates himself in nothingness as an incomprehensible object, sinister and strange, forsakes the connecting language of the iron outlines--the facet is mad, stuttering in an abyss. He shines with is-ness, but that is all.
It is held as the distinguishing feature of man that he is reflective, makes choices and lives their consequences, seeks meaning. Reflection, thought, abstracts; thus another defining feature of man is his ability to remove things, in thought, from their contexts, to isolate objects in nothingness. Strangeness lies dormant in all things (including ourselves) by virtue of our relation to them, and the secessions it often causes, pitting people, ideas, nations against one another--partially for fear of the encompassing and dividing strangeness--is the sin.
In some situations strangeness forces itself on us, acting on that strangeness which lies dormant, causing alienation. The masks and formalities of civilization are a thinly balanced order, an easily broken context of unity. Each has the potential to break it, but must not [reference to Lord of the Flies].
Steinbeck's naturalism, too, shows the virtue of connectivity and sin of separation. Any act, in his worlds, can be in itself virtuous or not so. Those who attempt to separate, to perpetuate themselves apart from the rest of the race (the owners in The Grapes of Wrath) cause the progressing stream of the human spirit [I believed in that?] to step backwards--with the demise of those in their paths as casualties.
The case of Stephen Dedalus, though, includes not only separation but return: "that which goes forth to the ends of the earth to traverse not itself: God, the sun, Shakespeare, a commercial traveler, having traversed in reality itself becomes that self" (Ulysses). [Here beginneth funny language:]
I. Unities: Conflict, Context, and Connectivity
To think of unities--would they not be harmonious, crystalline, ideal? There must be a standard of unity working its way into different roots for this separation, strangeness, isolation in nothingness to be a crime. How is it possible for a unity to be formed through the constant rising and falling, the expanding and breaking, of facet-boundaries? Time and change are at the root of strangeness. And of meaning. But unities may be formed between facets as they move through time (in timelessness the parts of the union are no longer distinguishable). It is possible for the facets to ally themselves with timelessness, shedding their temporary outlines, but this is separation from the hypothetical temporal union.
The instincts of the facet, the individual, however, make any perfect temporal union impossible. The individual wants freedom, which is impeded by connectivity and undermined by it. The facet wishes to ally itself with timelessness (white expanse in which human life-patterns are drawn) and be unintelligible. It is this entrance of potential rebellion, of subjectivity into temporal unions, that makes them discordant.
To discern such a thing as a union, with its equality and idealism, reference must be made to the eternal, which is objective. Yet each component (supposing it is human) is inevitably subjective. To define briefly subjectivity: subjectivity is excessive context, of temporal life, that we attempt to escape in the unifying objective ideal. Objectivity is unreachable: it is the state of an object isolated in nothingness. Even if objectivity could be reached in perspective it could not be rendered in language, no matter how dry. Language is a connecting order of life.
Thus it is through individual revelation that union is perceived and through subjectivity that the union becomes discordant. Each facet of the union is capable of insurrection, isolating itself in nothingness, or mistaking its own subjectivity for the whole--the union. It is the flipping between the two worlds that causes the discord. These unions seen in the light of the eternal are floating things and break easily.
If, though, any individual idea or being that reaches beyond itself is guilty of synecdoche, then what about meaning?
II. Meaning: Duality, Consequence, and Connection
The difference between meaning and separation is change; meaning is a process and transformation. That which means is not what it means, but becomes it. The common view, of course, accepts meaning as consequence--the degree to which the world is altered by something. Thus, meaning is unreachable in itself and always moving. It is the future, the horizon; its importance to us is as something as chase, break and chase again. Meaning is what we, by time, are not, and can see the outline of in that of our being. [Whatever.]
That aligns the definition of meaning with that of duality, or polarity. If something necessitates the existence of something else, then the second is the consequence and meaning of the first. Black means white, presence absence, separateness unity, strangeness familiarity, and so on.
What is the significance of meaning in relation to separation, to synecdoche? Secession occurs in the search for freedom. Meaning, then, is freedom; it ironically becomes the open space. [Huh?] Both meaning and freedom depend on time; it it weren't for time, freedom, we would "not mean but be."
Our Business
Words are fleeting. But they still go beyond us, extend to a collective, neutral, abstract realm. And it is here that their duty lies--in expurgating the silence that lies between people, in their relations, in bringing thick grayness to iridescent light.
This is our business: carving light from silence. How to go about this business? We must suppose words to be said, ignore gaps between letters and see only definite individual values in relation to others. Otherwise the entire machine would collapse [skepticism]; the iridescence and grayness of silence would fall together with that of words. All would be a bubbling blob, incomprehensible.
But language lets us see. True, this sight is shaded, ordered for functionality, but we must begin somewhere. (The question arises whether this sight is then false--according to what removal from truth?)
Our business in "trying to learn to use words" [this is from one of the Four Quartets by Eliot] is to bring as much negative grayness to positive consciousness as possible--to live fully, to excavate the "archaeology of a silence"! [I think this phrase is from Mallarme, but I'm not sure. It could be Foucault.] Are we mad, then? No. This is reason.
But my original question--how best to do this excavation--remains. This depends on the situation , which the communicator must assess in light of the aim: to bring that grayness that lies between us to a printed, iridescent light.
And, except insofar as as all relates to this space and our awareness of it, "the rest is not our business" [Eliot, same as above].
The Dialectic Continues
The spaces between words are necessary for bridging abysses that otherwise would break the contraption of communication. They are assumptions of epistemological familiarity and infallibility. They set standards that otherwise cannot be established.
Likewise, these spaces must be ignored. Although they provide a standard, an equality, for symbols that bridges wider gaps, they themselves form parallel gaps, and, if not taken for granted, will render words incomprehensible--conglomerated figures abstracted in nothingness, isolated and transfigured.
This is the dual role of objectivity. It equalizes, assimilates on the one hand what it surrounds, and transfigures on the other.
The Reality of Relations
[Personal voice]
The sharpness of the cold has dulled the edge of the world. The unwritten codes of human relations--which I never notice until I break one of them--seem constructed entirely to the end of maintaining the bleak subsistence of the gray space, the dormant space that separates, rather than connects. What is it, in connectivity, that we are frightened of? Is this simply the organization of a society whose cult is that of the individual? Are we frightened that the center--the space between, the ground unearthed in conversation--will be empty, and so ourselves?
In the lamplight two conversants sit. The light reflects on the plastic table cover. If I say that this is the truth of it--what will I mean? That, for the spoken word or physical understanding, this is where subject and object meet, make their original transaction?
If I say that this is the truth of it--this lamplight, these patterns traced in space--do I mean that this is also the space that connects, which our symbols bridge and bind?
I am certain that this is the outpost of the truth, that all is here, in the lamplight. In the humanity of the connection, one is fit to ancient patterns, historical robes transcending the present and past to a time-beyond-time. In historical robes we are removed--by conversation--to a knowledge that love is all Love, grief is all Grief, sympathy all Sympathy, where, in its own ancient role, even Solitude transcends.
**********
Afterwords
The "Sin of Synecdoche" formally stopped before the section on "Our Business." But I think the pages that follow are a working-out of the same issues. After "The Reality of Relations" I never went back to talking about "unities" again. I think I felt my task was less formal, but I also had less of an idea of how to do it. Ever since then I've been continually reminding myself of how to do whatever it is I'm supposed to be doing.
This journal entry is from September 1996, and is the successor to "The Ethics of Chaos and Order" (which, despite the weird vocabulary there invented, I wrote while reading The Philosophy of Logical Atomism). The title of this piece is "The Sin of Synecdoche." It can be read as a treatise either on existentialism or on rule-following, and hails from a time when I did not distinguish the continental from the analytic aspects of problems. Notes in brackets are by my current self.
The most fatal ontological mistake is the taking of a part for the whole, since, as a rule, reality is always infinitely greater that what we assume it to be. If I take a portion of reality to be the whole of it, there is always the danger of encountering other portions, which will set up contradictions; these may either be resolved (partially) by expanding one's view to include the contradicting sphere, or let to fight to the deaths of ideas and men. In society, these facets are utterly interdependent, as those of a stained glass window; if one secedes, he is meaningless--and so is the rest of the window.
If one facet secedes completely, isolates himself in nothingness as an incomprehensible object, sinister and strange, forsakes the connecting language of the iron outlines--the facet is mad, stuttering in an abyss. He shines with is-ness, but that is all.
It is held as the distinguishing feature of man that he is reflective, makes choices and lives their consequences, seeks meaning. Reflection, thought, abstracts; thus another defining feature of man is his ability to remove things, in thought, from their contexts, to isolate objects in nothingness. Strangeness lies dormant in all things (including ourselves) by virtue of our relation to them, and the secessions it often causes, pitting people, ideas, nations against one another--partially for fear of the encompassing and dividing strangeness--is the sin.
In some situations strangeness forces itself on us, acting on that strangeness which lies dormant, causing alienation. The masks and formalities of civilization are a thinly balanced order, an easily broken context of unity. Each has the potential to break it, but must not [reference to Lord of the Flies].
Steinbeck's naturalism, too, shows the virtue of connectivity and sin of separation. Any act, in his worlds, can be in itself virtuous or not so. Those who attempt to separate, to perpetuate themselves apart from the rest of the race (the owners in The Grapes of Wrath) cause the progressing stream of the human spirit [I believed in that?] to step backwards--with the demise of those in their paths as casualties.
The case of Stephen Dedalus, though, includes not only separation but return: "that which goes forth to the ends of the earth to traverse not itself: God, the sun, Shakespeare, a commercial traveler, having traversed in reality itself becomes that self" (Ulysses). [Here beginneth funny language:]
I. Unities: Conflict, Context, and Connectivity
To think of unities--would they not be harmonious, crystalline, ideal? There must be a standard of unity working its way into different roots for this separation, strangeness, isolation in nothingness to be a crime. How is it possible for a unity to be formed through the constant rising and falling, the expanding and breaking, of facet-boundaries? Time and change are at the root of strangeness. And of meaning. But unities may be formed between facets as they move through time (in timelessness the parts of the union are no longer distinguishable). It is possible for the facets to ally themselves with timelessness, shedding their temporary outlines, but this is separation from the hypothetical temporal union.
The instincts of the facet, the individual, however, make any perfect temporal union impossible. The individual wants freedom, which is impeded by connectivity and undermined by it. The facet wishes to ally itself with timelessness (white expanse in which human life-patterns are drawn) and be unintelligible. It is this entrance of potential rebellion, of subjectivity into temporal unions, that makes them discordant.
To discern such a thing as a union, with its equality and idealism, reference must be made to the eternal, which is objective. Yet each component (supposing it is human) is inevitably subjective. To define briefly subjectivity: subjectivity is excessive context, of temporal life, that we attempt to escape in the unifying objective ideal. Objectivity is unreachable: it is the state of an object isolated in nothingness. Even if objectivity could be reached in perspective it could not be rendered in language, no matter how dry. Language is a connecting order of life.
Thus it is through individual revelation that union is perceived and through subjectivity that the union becomes discordant. Each facet of the union is capable of insurrection, isolating itself in nothingness, or mistaking its own subjectivity for the whole--the union. It is the flipping between the two worlds that causes the discord. These unions seen in the light of the eternal are floating things and break easily.
If, though, any individual idea or being that reaches beyond itself is guilty of synecdoche, then what about meaning?
II. Meaning: Duality, Consequence, and Connection
The difference between meaning and separation is change; meaning is a process and transformation. That which means is not what it means, but becomes it. The common view, of course, accepts meaning as consequence--the degree to which the world is altered by something. Thus, meaning is unreachable in itself and always moving. It is the future, the horizon; its importance to us is as something as chase, break and chase again. Meaning is what we, by time, are not, and can see the outline of in that of our being. [Whatever.]
That aligns the definition of meaning with that of duality, or polarity. If something necessitates the existence of something else, then the second is the consequence and meaning of the first. Black means white, presence absence, separateness unity, strangeness familiarity, and so on.
What is the significance of meaning in relation to separation, to synecdoche? Secession occurs in the search for freedom. Meaning, then, is freedom; it ironically becomes the open space. [Huh?] Both meaning and freedom depend on time; it it weren't for time, freedom, we would "not mean but be."
Our Business
Words are fleeting. But they still go beyond us, extend to a collective, neutral, abstract realm. And it is here that their duty lies--in expurgating the silence that lies between people, in their relations, in bringing thick grayness to iridescent light.
This is our business: carving light from silence. How to go about this business? We must suppose words to be said, ignore gaps between letters and see only definite individual values in relation to others. Otherwise the entire machine would collapse [skepticism]; the iridescence and grayness of silence would fall together with that of words. All would be a bubbling blob, incomprehensible.
But language lets us see. True, this sight is shaded, ordered for functionality, but we must begin somewhere. (The question arises whether this sight is then false--according to what removal from truth?)
Our business in "trying to learn to use words" [this is from one of the Four Quartets by Eliot] is to bring as much negative grayness to positive consciousness as possible--to live fully, to excavate the "archaeology of a silence"! [I think this phrase is from Mallarme, but I'm not sure. It could be Foucault.] Are we mad, then? No. This is reason.
But my original question--how best to do this excavation--remains. This depends on the situation , which the communicator must assess in light of the aim: to bring that grayness that lies between us to a printed, iridescent light.
And, except insofar as as all relates to this space and our awareness of it, "the rest is not our business" [Eliot, same as above].
The Dialectic Continues
The spaces between words are necessary for bridging abysses that otherwise would break the contraption of communication. They are assumptions of epistemological familiarity and infallibility. They set standards that otherwise cannot be established.
Likewise, these spaces must be ignored. Although they provide a standard, an equality, for symbols that bridges wider gaps, they themselves form parallel gaps, and, if not taken for granted, will render words incomprehensible--conglomerated figures abstracted in nothingness, isolated and transfigured.
This is the dual role of objectivity. It equalizes, assimilates on the one hand what it surrounds, and transfigures on the other.
The Reality of Relations
[Personal voice]
The sharpness of the cold has dulled the edge of the world. The unwritten codes of human relations--which I never notice until I break one of them--seem constructed entirely to the end of maintaining the bleak subsistence of the gray space, the dormant space that separates, rather than connects. What is it, in connectivity, that we are frightened of? Is this simply the organization of a society whose cult is that of the individual? Are we frightened that the center--the space between, the ground unearthed in conversation--will be empty, and so ourselves?
In the lamplight two conversants sit. The light reflects on the plastic table cover. If I say that this is the truth of it--what will I mean? That, for the spoken word or physical understanding, this is where subject and object meet, make their original transaction?
If I say that this is the truth of it--this lamplight, these patterns traced in space--do I mean that this is also the space that connects, which our symbols bridge and bind?
I am certain that this is the outpost of the truth, that all is here, in the lamplight. In the humanity of the connection, one is fit to ancient patterns, historical robes transcending the present and past to a time-beyond-time. In historical robes we are removed--by conversation--to a knowledge that love is all Love, grief is all Grief, sympathy all Sympathy, where, in its own ancient role, even Solitude transcends.
**********
Afterwords
The "Sin of Synecdoche" formally stopped before the section on "Our Business." But I think the pages that follow are a working-out of the same issues. After "The Reality of Relations" I never went back to talking about "unities" again. I think I felt my task was less formal, but I also had less of an idea of how to do it. Ever since then I've been continually reminding myself of how to do whatever it is I'm supposed to be doing.
