Archive for ‘Philosophy’

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Nihil est sine ratione

by Awet on August 27, 2006 at 11:32 pm
Posted In: Philosophy, Schopenhauer

In Latin that spells “nothing is without reason.” We often say “everything has a reason” when we are trying to explain something, an object or an event. The appropriate philosophical terminology is a bit more technical: the principle of sufficient reason, (PSR) which means all contingent facts have an explanation. Schopenhauer pointed out the PSR is the fundamental principle of all knowledge, as well as the foundation of science. Good philosophy consists of competent explanations, and generally, there are at least four explanations: causation, judgment, transcendental, and motivation.

In this blog I will focus on judgment, or how we explain with concepts. Concepts are a certain class of representations we often use in our language as abstract generalizations. We should be careful not to mistake concepts with “real” objects as in images or words, which are actually concrete. As generalizations, concepts subsume innumerable particulars under them. Concepts are dependent on the everyday world, as well as partially constitutive of it. They’re abstracted from perceptible particulars, and the faculty of reason that creates those abstractions is a function of the brain. Since the original objects from which they’re abstracted are already representations of perception, concepts are “representations of representations.”

Concepts and the faculty of reason are crucial because they enable people to make judgments, formulate propositions, plan the future, construct scientific theories, act purposively and cooperate with others. Yet, despite all that, reason does not provide any knowledge of reality. “All that is material in our knowledge – that is, all that cannot be reduced to subjective form – comes from without, and thus ultimately from the objective perception of the corporeal world, a perception that has its origin in sensation” (Fourfold Principle of Sufficient Reason, p. 170)

All primary knowledge of reality is gained by the understanding alone. The understanding is another brain function of the brain where the human nervous system processes and interprets the data from the senses. With the assistance of perception, the understanding renders “real” objects (representations) and produces experiential knowledge. All apprehensions of causality and all great discoveries belong to the understanding, without the use of concepts. Thus, reason functions by creating concepts and provides secondary knowledge; a second-order knowledge of truths through concepts and words. “Every simpleton has the faculty of reason, give him the premises, and he will draw the conclusion. But the understanding supplies primary and therefore intuitive knowledge.” (Fourfold, p. 113)

This explains Schopenhauer’s contempt of the other philosophers when they claim reason does transcend experience and is capable of intuiting things in themselves. All metaphysicians who grant reason an intuitive role are mistaken, which means all ontological arguments are fallacious. They attempt to move from concept to concept in order to arrive at reality by the inferences of reason alone.

Concepts are useless in isolation, but when they are combined to make true judgments, they do express knowledge. Judgments themselves cannot provide any knowledge, for no judgment is intrinsically true. Truth is a relational property. If a judgment is true, it is based on something other than itself, an external ground. Therefore, every true judgment has a ground that is external to it and constitutes its reason. If this reason is a sufficient one, then necessarily, the truth of the judgment follows.

There are certain judgments that are transcendental, where the truth of a judgment depends on the necessary presuppositions of experience. Judgments about space, time, mathematics and causation are all transcendental truths. Time and space are grounds of being, for they are the presuppositions of experience. Transcendental truths are “prior” to experience, because they are the conditions that make experience possible, allowing for an “inner” temporal sense, and an “outer” spatial sense. Time makes arithmetic possible, while space does the same for geometry. They are particulars, not concepts. As particulars, time and space make up parts and the systematic interrelatedness of these parts constitute the root of the third form of the principle of sufficient reason. Time is made up an infinite number of ordered moments, and each moment has a determinate position in relation to and dependent upon the others. Likewise, space is made up of an infinite number of ordered points (which form lines, angles, areas and volumes). The geometric properties of any part of space have another part or parts of space as their sufficient reason, which is neither causal nor conceptual, but ontological. If we ask why any part of space is as it is, we find the answer in terms of how the other parts of space are as they are. I.e., the angles of a given triangle are as they are because the sides of the triangle are as they are. The combination of time and space makes perception possible for a subject.

The existence of numbers (and arithmetic) depend on the possibility of counting in time, and this proves that arithmetic is an intuitive and systematic grasp of temporal relations, just as much spatial relations are attained in geometry. Geometry, for Schopenhauer, is a direct non-empirical perception of the parts of space and their relations. Euclid’s proofs are not what geometry ought to be, for they are mere conceptual exercises that relate judgments to judgments, a mere exercise of reason. Schopenhauer dismisses the proofs as “a brilliant piece of perversity,” (World as Will and Representation I p. 70) for they do not offer an insight into the reality of space and its properties. The judgments of Euclid’s conclusions are true, but this truth is logical, which depends on the truth of its premises, and consequently these proofs are concerned with concepts, rather than space.

So much for rationalism, and so much for mathematics!

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Metaphor is fundamental

by Awet on August 20, 2006 at 8:53 pm
Posted In: Nietzsche, Philosophy, Poststructuralism
Metaphor is fundamental

Previously, I discussed the concept of metaphor here, and I thought a lot was left unsaid.

All philosophical concepts are interdependent; they depend on other concepts, which means they cannot be analyzed in isolation. There are no precise definitions for philosophical concepts, because they institute a new way of thinking. For instance, the concept of love does not refer to a particular example, but rather, it “enacts” or “creates” a new possibility or a new thought of love. Not only are dictionary definitions superficial and shallow, they are also restrictive, whereas the philosophical concept is open and expansive. Therefore, to understand a concept philosophically is to find the new connections and new possibilities they reveal.

For Nietzsche, when thoughts and concepts are superimposed on the flux of reality, they dissect it into convenient units. In other words, to think is to substitute a fixed image in the place of fluid reality. This leads to the conclusion that all thoughts are metaphorical.

We have been trained to understand a noun, say, the “pig,” must refer to the animal in the farm, gorging from the trough. When we choose to use that word metaphorically (He’s a pig! ) we are referring to someone who acts greedily, eats too much or noisily. Yet, the word ‘pig’ is arbitrary, whether it refers to an animal or something else. In both cases, in the face of infinitely different reality – each pig, razorback, Miss Piggy, Francis the Pig, Babe, Piglet – we affix some word that will apply in all cases. This practice inspires an illusion that there is a general type, a “pigness” and it refers to something; a fixed form for our labels of convenience.

Nonetheless: if language creates concepts, then, language, as well as thoughts, is metaphorical. I perceive a concrete and physical reality and refer to it with something else: the sign or the concept. However, the illusion that there is a “truth” behind language remains, and moreover, we also believe in the illusion that there are methods of speaking or writing that will escape metaphor and refer to the “true” world behind appearances. Nietzsche is consistent here – there is no “true world” but merely appearances behind appearances. It is interpretation all the way down!

This is problematic, though. If one truly grasp the implications, then despair looms because of convenient illusions, where we project a fictional “true world” beyond language and appearances, and this “promised land” always remains eternally unapproachable, unattainable. After such illusions are shattered and we finally give up our addiction to truth, we have no choice but be resigned to welcome nihilism as our final guest.

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Human Nature: True, False, or merely a construct?

by Awet on August 11, 2006 at 12:54 am
Posted In: Philosophy, Poststructuralism, Sartre

Do you think there must be a human nature? If such a thing exists, at least a relatively fixed one, then true scientific understanding is possible. Because people, with a very limited amount or set of experiences, are capable of learning their own language, as well as use it creatively, then there must be some sort of “bio-physical structure” within the mind that enables individuals to deduce a unified language from the multiplicity of individual experiences. If you agree with this conclusion then you are a typical cartesian rationalist. You will answer questions with appeals to universal human nature and reason, the standard for intellectuals to judge and rationalize a precise conceptualization for a better society and the future. Violence, injustice, falsehood, etc., must be fought for the sake of justice, because there must be a guiding principle, a fixed and rational standard for knowledge, society… Otherwise we cannot judge which actions or claims are true or correct or just or determine which actions to take.

On the other hand, if you think human nature does not exist, because “existence precedes essence,” then there are no rational principles or a priori values. No transcendent values exist prior to choice, ready-made and perfect, waiting for your consent in your choice how to live, for you are nothing else but what you choose to make of yourself. Consequently you are responsible of yourself and for everyone else. You create a certain image of a person of your choices, through your actions. In choosing yourself you choose humanity. What you do contributes to humanity in general, hence, you are responsible of all mankind. Once you become aware that your choices actually chooses for everyone else, you will experience a deep-seated anxiety. Once you realize that there is no God, nobody with infinitely perfect wisdom who knows the “Right choice,” then your choice is completely your responsibility, your creation. Your choice cannot depend on anyone else. If there is no pre-existing human configuration, no perfect society, no standard of precise justice, then you are condemned to always choose freely.

However, if you wished to avoid starting with the abstract question by starting in a different direction and pose this – how does the concept of human nature function within society – then you evade the requirement of making claims of universal truths, and instead choose to historicize grand abstractions. This method distinguishes the actual operational categories within a discipline from a broad conceptual marker, like “life,” in which themselves may have had of little import regarding the internal evolution of the scientific disciplines. Therefore, because there is no external position or universal understanding that is beyond history and society, the task is to historicize the universal categories each time they’re encountered. I.e., it was not through the study of human nature that discoveries were possible, such as linguists with “consonant mutation” or psychologists, the “principle of analysis of dreams,” or anthropologists, the “structure of myths.” This way, the “why” questions are transformed into “how.” In the attempt to answer “why,” you are restricted to models of justice, knowledge, truth, or search for general principles that evaluate the condition or situation. Perhaps you realize this attempt actually hides the concrete function of power. The notion of truth or justice or moraltiy has been concoted in order to function as an instrument of a political and economic power. For knowledge is already soaked within conflicts small and large, not external or above the disagreements, or discord.

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Strategy of thought

by Awet on July 12, 2006 at 11:44 am
Posted In: Philosophy

History teaches us that the mode of philosophical thought predetermines its results. Philosophy, conceived as either a reflective, a contemplative or a communicative discipline – where philosophizing is the act of reflection, contemplation or communication – contains the impulse towards a system. What often entrenches the mind is dogma, in the form of worthless first principles, the advocacy of degenerating metaphysics, and the required lip-service to distinguished intellectuals. In order to resist this solidification of the mind, drop the abstract play of abstractions and return back to the present moment and rethink the situation, the problem, the concept under question. Moreover, a rigorous and honest self-criticism will help avoid the repetition of ineffective methods. Perhaps new directions, even if they are risky, are called for, since by giving up in comfort and security, one gains new ground by boldness. When the mind makes itself fluid and mobile – call the concept into question – war is declared against slothfulness, the inertia of thought, and static views and isolated idee fixes are condemned.

What ultimately limits people is a deep and protracted bad faith – far worse than just an inability to confront reality – for it is a refusal of seeing things as they are in perception. The older one becomes, the more he or she sinks into the past, into obsolesce and irrelevance. What is already agreed as the consensus turns into a doctrine – a systematic treatise that demands “thou must” – a mental veil that prevents clear perception, a wall that blocks new paths of thought. The true spirit of philosophy is never the unquestioning and slavish adulation of the zeitgeist, for its history is far more active and constructive in the creation of concepts, even though this very assertion already falls short.

In order to rid oneself of myths and misconceptions one must give up the search for a first principle of metaphysics -a foundation of knowledge, a logical sequence of concepts, or a conceptual framework that serves as a perfect sieve where everything is filtered through, information in, garbage out – for the magic formula to philosophy does not exist. Concepts are mere shadows of perception, derivative, and they function as vague possibilities in the brain. In the creation of the concept, the thinker is absorbed in experience, and in pure perception insights emerge and inspire a whole new perspective, an appropriate understanding of reality. In order to become a free thinker, all fetishes of intellectualism (books, techniques, formulas, catchy slogans) must be given up.

Whenever one contemplate over an unpleasant experience, oftentimes one think in the hypothetical: if only I had done this instead of that! The correct method or the solution arrives long after it is needed. But this is not the problem, that the thought is too late and one’s knowledge is blamed for being deficient. Had I known more, or thought more carefully! The actual solution is a failure of being truly absorbed in the here and now – paying careful attention to the text – and remain insensitive to the changing circumstances. I continually repeat my own thoughts, re-apply old theories and ideas that have nothing to do with the present situation. Reading additional books, absorbing theories and re-thinking do not improve the problem either. Consciousness is a river one cannot step in twice at the same point.

The creative thinker is conspicuous and stands apart from the rest – not because they know more – for they are capable of discarding preconceived notions, their subjectivity, and focus intensely in their perception by having the imagination to peer beyond the immediate objects of perception. Where the scholar constructs idealized structures (ideal political state, rational morality, mathematical formula) according to rationality, and his servile loyalty leads to a constant confusion of the model for the real and force experience to filter through such tidy algorithms, the thinker knows the right way to articulate what is and what isn’t, without the crutch of a philosophical system, especially when he realizes the inadequacy of language itself, in a profound encounter with being.

However, knowledge, experience and theories are all limited themselves, for careful reflection does not truly prepare oneself for the chaos of life and the limitless possibilities that it contains. This difference between our convictions and what actually happens is “friction,” and the difference is permanent. Our minds should be pliable enough to keep up with change and adapt to surprises. The more one adapts one’s thoughts to the circumstances, the more authentic one’s knowledge will be. On the other hand the farther one is buried in predigested theories and other people’s experiences, the more distant and distorted his/her thoughts become.

While there is value in investigating the failure of previous thoughts, it is more important to develop the ability to think in the moment. the mind is akin to a river: the faster it flows, the better it keeps up with the present, for change is constant and new paradigms of thoughts are possible. Only the agents of change drive intellectual revolutions in science, in philosophy, and in art.

The first principle of thought is to dispense with all principles, all systems of philosophy, all the “ism” school of thought. The very greatest of all philosophers were not mere mouthpieces of a monolith of systematic metaphysics, for they found a new perspective of all-too-familiar problems, tired subjects and other dead-end topics. The scholar’s conviction that philosophy must obey inexorable laws or function according to timeless rules results in a rigid and static position, is married by a myopic perspective, one that easily hardens theory into dogma. The sacred cows of the past are all hollow idols that deserve the hammer of the allzermalmer, since they typically fail Nietzsche’s “tuning fork” test. For the oldest idols of them all are are also – the hollowest!

Our education is a major obstacle for independent thinking, due to its tendency to inscribe “precepts” deep within the mind of the student. The trained thinker wastes time struggling with learned rules rather than the present circumstances. Socrates holds the key: the thinker knows nothing and began anew, free of even the most cherished ideals. His mentality isn’t cluttered – for his insights come from immediate experience, an authentic intuition. He thinks, rather than depend on crutches like someone else’s book or theory.

The current paradigm of philosophy is actually a dangerous impediment for freethinking – even if it does seem to be successful and solve a host of problems. The member of the ruling ideology tends to echo the same strategies of thought, which turns him into a mental sloth, complacent enough to fall in step with the times. A true thinker should remain constantly suspicious, and avoid getting drunk on the zeitgeist by recasting each problem of philosophy in a new light.

Children themselves are naturally adaptive; their minds were constant, always receptive to new experiences and capable of immersing themselves thoroughly. The child learned quickly, for the world is completely new. When facing obstacles (frustration, boredom) the child became creative in their dealing with the problems, and moved on to other things. In this respect, the geniuses such as Leibniz, Plato, etc., were childlike. They saw things as they are, and remained sensitive to inconstant experience. Because change is perpetual, the mentally fluid adapts the quickest to the circumstances, dispensing with preconceived notions.

In the history of philosophy, progress occurs only when a generation successfully identifies the unexamined notions of its previous generation. The current generation develops a new method of thought that maximized a novel way of seeing. The thinker has a extraordinary antenna that is synchronized for the budding trends in thought, while retaining the inherent character of flexibility in order to adapt to those trends. In other words, the thinker is ahead of everyone else, because he lacks the sentimentality that is attached to a fashionable school of thought, and knows which rising trend is viable. The mind of the thinker is as pliable as a quicksilver.

The predictability of daily life is inimical to free thinking, for insights sometimes come during or after a complete shattering of habitual behavior. Comfort and routine and stale pattern often entrench the mind with stale patterns, and enchain it to the past. One often begins with a great idea, but during the execution, the idea is buried under a straitjacket of a rigid structure of form, and the process of creation of thought is merely mechanical. When the mind is forced to deal with a new aspect of reality, it might be risky, but also, refreshing and reinvigorating. When people are acting as they often do, the dynamic stays the same. Once a novel way of thinking takes place, the dynamic is transformed, and new possibilities emerge. When the mind adapts to the complexity and chaos of the world by becoming a quicksilver, free of rigid tactics or the comforts of static positions where it is obliged to defend an idea. Old problems gain new angles for attack.

In summary, this is intended as a strategy of thought for wrestling with a problem, a concept, and in dealing with the friction and the discrepancy between what is intended and what actually occurs. Whether this entire exercise is a thinly veiled entry of “thou must,” or self-criticism, a private lesson that subtlely erects another principle of philosophy for all mankind, it does not depend on whether the writer must be a philosopher. Perhaps a “mock” philosopher can outline the zones of thought that is what Proust calls the “real without being actual, ideal without being abstract.” The reader is free to determine this a “credo ut intelligam,” and rifle what is useful and then discard the rest as nonsense.

“To know that one is in a certain condition, in a certain state, is already a process of liberation; but a man who is not aware of his condition, of his struggle, tries to be something other than he is, which brings about habit. So, then, let us keep in mind that we want to examine what is, to observe and be aware of exactly what is the actual, without giving it any slant, without giving it an interpretation. It needs an extraordinarily astute mind, an extraordinarily pliable heart, to be aware of and to follow what is; because what is, is constantly moving, constantly undergoing a transformation, and if the mind is tethered to belief, to knowledge, it ceases to pursue, it ceases to follow the swift movement of what is. What is, is not static, surely – it is constantly moving , as you will see if you observe it very closely. To follow it you need a very swift mind and a pliable heart – which are denied when the mind is static, fixed in a belief, in a prejudice, in an identification; and a mind and heart that are dry cannot follow easily, swiftly, that which is.” – Krishnamurti

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The tragic fate of Tragedy…

by Awet on July 8, 2006 at 11:05 am
Posted In: History of Ideas, Nietzsche
The tragic fate of Tragedy…

Recently I’ve thought about how tragedy has been minimized in modern culture if not totally eliminated. If tragedy is supposed to be the aesthetic experience par excellence, the most divine product, then its slow fade to black is worth investigating. It is a given that the greatest of literary geniuses of the modern era consistently fail to produce a contemporary account of tragedy, and the reasons are legion.

Setting aside the potentially many other factors, here is one possible account: despite evolving as rational creatures, our animal nature remains potent. It reacts only within the sphere of perception, the immediate environment, which chains thinking to the heat of the current moment. Our rational and animal natures have been in constant conflict. During reflection we formulate plans for a goal, but in the heat of the moment, we sink to emotions and lose perspective. Sometimes we’re clever when we get what we want without hassle, but hardly ever examine the consequences or whether that is necessary. The deliberate, rational and reflective thinker is often eclipsed by the screaming, reactive and emotional child.

But the ancient Greeks, supposedly, were closer to the “great leap forward” (from immediate Dionysian experience to Apollonian abstractions) than we were, and they found this dual nature to be tragic. Man was tragic, because his knowledge is insignificant, his vision, limited, and his goals, ultimately comic. We find the protagonist in Oedipus Rex optimistic, because he thinks he knows enough to decide what to do, and at the same time, he is beholden to his emotions and desires. Given a limited perspective, the protagonist is doubly reckless – but once the poor sap finds out the awful truth, he rips his eyes out. Despite being able to see the world, he couldn’t see into himself: his inner eye was blind.

The Greek drama has changed – and despite a brief resurgence during Renaissance, and a short-lived fad of existentialism in the 40′s, these days, we’re no longer tragic, or at least, our culture values has changed and the majority of our creative art reflect little tragic elements. Perhaps it is because of the enculturation of the Grand Dogma during the Age of Reason, outlets like therapy replaced the catarthic function of greek tragedy, resulted in the decline of the audience for tragedy.

Also, look here for additional comments on the tragic and religious impulses.

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Sometimes a spade is not a spade.

by Awet on June 22, 2006 at 3:16 pm
Posted In: Literature, Nietzsche, Philosophy
Sometimes a spade is not a spade.

Aren’t metaphors merely a colorful way of saying something literal, that is otherwise, a nonboring way of saying something boring? Merely the rhetorician’s weapon that subjects his/her audience into compliance? The dictionary of literary terms denote the metaphor as a figure of speech where something is described in the terms of another, or attribute something with a quality that is associated with something else. For instance, Whitman’s metaphor for grass is “the beautiful uncut hair of graves.” The relation between the two terms in a metaphor is implicit, unlike a similie, where it is explicit.

Not only is metaphor the basic linguistic unit of poetry, often found in romantic and modernist poetry, it is also a pervasive presence in all forms of language. Generally, the metaphor is a catch-all category for all figures of speech. Yet, as long we remain within the conception of metaphor as an embellishment of speech, we only decieve ourselves – for it is actually the original impulse of language, where its primal level is poetry. The concepts we now determine as literal used to be metaphorical, and we have long forgotten their origins.

However, metaphor in philosophy should not be mistaken as a merely aesthetic phenomenon found in poetic language, for even metaphors contain an explanatory principle.

If language is actually based on rhetoric, as opposed to logic – the presumption of the philosophers before Nietzsche – then signs representing ideas do have spatiotemporal qualities, a history, thereby making platonism impossible, and the boundary between sense and reference is erased….

Hardcore empiricists like Thomas Hobbes condemned metaphor as an “abuse of language,” largely because of its capacity of obfuscation and corruption. He couldn’t get beyond the narrow conception of metaphor as an “ornament” of language, which insists that rational language is free from such contaminants, and well-equipped with the reliability of literal meaning in natural language.

For Nietzsche, metaphor is the ultimate key to language, religion, concepts, perception, for it is the very symbol of interpretation, the foundation of meaning and truth themselves. Nietzsche agreed with Hobbes that metaphor distorts, but departed from the Leviathan in the insistence that truth can be apprehended by metaphorical thought. The very privileging of metaphor promises a philosophy that elude the neatness of conceptual language. In the Birth of tragedy, Nietzsche condemns conceptual language for it contains little more than “dead metaphors,” totally inappropriate for the expression of the truth of the world. We are but representations of the essence of reality, mere appearances of the “indescribable-in-itself.” Once we forget that our concepts come from metaphorical origins, then the belief that concepts represent reality sinks in and entrenches our minds.

Concepts themselves, say, the concept of a book, have been abstracted three levels away from the original sense data, sensation. First, the sensory stimuli is transformed into an “image” by the complex physiological processes of the brain, a representation of perception, a coherent symbol of significance. Then this “image” is ostensibly given a sound, a word, a generalization, making language the second level of abstraction. Lastly, within consciousness the word-sound becomes the concept. In other words, there is no direct conception that ideally correspond to reality, or at least the first level of sensation, for the initial sense data is metamorphed three times in order to arrive at a concept, which is merely a “figurative metaphor.”

For instance, “cause” and “effect” are conventional fictions that designate and communicate, but not explain, given that there is no ‘causal connection’ in the in-itself. If we are the inventors of causes, then our thoughts are essentially mythopoetical – where the grammatical subjects of language is converted into the substance of the world. Once we realize that we always transform our experiences with metaphors, not duplicate or reproduce them with concepts, and that metaphors themselves become concepts, and build vast edifices and systems, then our conceptual thought is necessarily “anthropomorphic through and through, and contains not a single point that is true-in-itself, objective, universal, apart from man.” (Concerning truth n falshood in an extramoral sense, I) We are the architects of our prisons, and cannot go outside the bars of reason.

Once metaphor is realized as the master key of meaning: then epistemology is little more than a set of aesthetic preferences. Metaphysical knowledge is the most useless of all knowledge, although post metaphysical thought is possible, as long interpretation consists of concepts derived from active metaphors.

Therefore, there is no metaphysics or epistemology or even an axiology in the philosophy of Nietzsche. In essence, the style of Nietzsche demonstrates that all his linguistic artifacts are metaphors themselves. Sarah Kofman did a huge favor for the future of Nietzsche scholarship by publishing a book called “Nietzsche and Metaphor,” in which she pointed out nietzsche’s aim: the deconstruction of all metaphysical oppositions where the indefinite metaphorical play of style places his texts beyond metaphysics.

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Boredom is not boring in itself.

by Awet on June 4, 2006 at 4:29 am
Posted In: Nietzsche, Philosophy, Sartre, Schopenhauer
Boredom is not boring in itself.

I first encountered philosophical boredom in Nietzsche and Sartre during my early years, and didn’t really grasp the significance or magnitude until I read American Psycho. While vacationing in Italy, I read the majority of the Fritzean corpus and came across two important aphorisms regarding boredom: (paraphrased from memory) if the highest creatures are susceptible to boredom, then the infinitely perfect being is also susceptible to infinite boredom. Therefore when god “rested” on the 7th day he was bored with his creation so he sank to the grass and became a snake….

Great shades of manicheanism! Perhaps this inspired James Morrow to postulate a dual God, somewhat schizophrenic at the end of his fictional tale of theothanatology…..

in the second aphorism, finding such infinite boredom to be unbearable, the Gods invent man for entertainment. Yet man himself in turn, grow afflicted with boredom, meaning the Gods merely passed the buck…

While those aphorisms left a brand on my thoughts, it wasn’t until i took a class on existentialism and read Sartre and learned how boredom is the naked access to being. In the Nausea, the main character Roquentin is having one hell of a boring time. He is utterly bored with his task, the city he lives in, the people, and his life. This boredom isn’t transient, or temporary – it actually becomes a malady that transforms his entire perspective, or more accurately, intensifies his awareness of existence where individual objects lose their identities, and become unfamiliar – a rather nauseating experience. Once things no longer have identities or are familiar, this nauseating feeling exposes us as the ultimate arbitrator of meaning.

There is a metaphysics of boredom…. Where ordinary boredom is being bored by something, the metaphysical and more profound, boredom is when “it is boring for one.”

Heidegger says boredom is an illustration of mood a condition of being, which means when we are bored, we disclose the ontological status of the world… Boredom discloses the world in its “everydayness” and results in an understanding of it. Therefore there is no “cause” of boredom, nor is it “out there.”

Nonetheless… i feel Schopenhauer has the most persuasive take of boredom: if unhappiness or dissatisfaction is the default state, normal, and the desires of an individual is consistently met, then his or her mode of being actually dissolves, and he or she encounters emptiness – for the sole mode of existence (restless striving) has been abolished. Therefore, we all are “zigzagging” between two extremes: the Scylla of the will and the Charybdis of boredom. The 20/21stcentury version of Schopenhauer’s formula of bread and circuses is McDonald’s and television.

In literature, Kate Chopin’s Awakening captures this formula quite well where the protagonist grows disenchanted with her good life.

Life may be a “hundred times too short to bore ourselves,” that time is what we want most but yet, what we use worst. (William Penn)

Here is an interesting link to a paper on Voegelin and Boredom.

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The irony of the Enlightenment

by Awet on May 24, 2006 at 5:01 pm
Posted In: History of Ideas, Philosophy

The irony of the Enlightenment: Immanuel Kant, the late 18th century thinker, was indisputably the greatest philosopher of Enlightenment. But it is also interesting to note that his critical philosophy project resulted in a devastating blow to the foundation of Enlightenment itself- our trust in reason. The faculty of reason is essentially an impulse for the unconditioned condition, and constantly urges our understanding on. Kant made it clear that man will never know the true nature of reality, and is limited to mere appearances. Despite being championed as the great icon of Enlightenment, with his transcendentalism he set the ball rolling down the mountain of truth and shattered the ideals of the gilded age at the bottom, in the gulch of the 20th century.

We are picking among the remnants for whatever remains salvageable. The consequences of such absurd praise of reason or rationalism in Enlightenment resulted in two great wars in the 20th century, which were committed at the source of naturalistic humanism. Reason and rationalism, secular reasoning especially never achieved its vast promise of transforming a superstitious culture into a rational utopia. At least some of us realize that within this massive failure, liberation is never of the human, but always and only in a negatory manner: from the human. Where does that leave us? The ghost of a lost innocence haunts the age in the form of postmodernist reflections.

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World as Will and Representation: Conclusion

by Awet on April 17, 2006 at 9:52 am
Posted In: Philosophy, Schopenhauer

Criticism

The philosophy is, of course, not free from criticism, and the following instances are among the best.

The mathematical critique:
The will is supposedly “singular,” or more precisely – uncountable – because numbers in arithmetic, which is an operation of the intellect, applies solely to the world of appearances. This limitation implies that numbers are inapplicable to the essence of reality. Now, since the Will is uncountable or numbers are inapplicable then it does not follow that it is singular. Schopenhauer could’ve said that since causality does not apply to reality itself, then it can no longer be considered as the “cement of the universe” and that the unity of the cosmos does not depend on the external relations between its components. Other philosophers have attacked the singular conception of the will. In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche points out that the very word “will” is merely a concept that implies unity-as-a-word, while referring to something very complicated – a plurality of sensations, often conflicting and struggling – that either affirms or negate. A thousand pinpricks of quanta fluctuating at all times…

Knowledge of the will via inner sense
If the thing-in-itself is will, and we know this through “inner sense,” given that there are less phenomenal forms between the thing-in-itself and the knowing subject, then this presupposes that a lower number of phenomena reveals the true nature of reality better or truer than a higher number. Schopenhauer does realize this difficulty in his later writings.

Moral judgment of existence
Another problem is the entire metaphysical interpretation of existence as will – it seems plausible that an alternative rendition could be cast differently, where the will is not necessarily an evil force – but a dynamic force of power, of difference, something worth affirming. Instead of the solitary hermit who starves himself into unconsciousness, the brave and the defiant warrior who struggles against the overwhelming odds of fate could actually withstand the heaviest burden, a Sisyphean hero who pauses and wipes his brow. Affirmation as the inverted attitude of pessimism remains possible, even if the will is insatiable as the present is a continuous vanishing. Schopenhauer is easy prey for Nietzsche’s criticisms, where the fatal error of subjecting existence to a moral judgment has merely repeated the error of the past metaphysicians. “A pessimist who negates both God and world but stops before morality, – who affirms morality and plays his flute, affirms laede neminem morality: excuse me? Is this really – a pessimist?”

Music as the copy of the will
Could the copy of something so purposeless and evil ever be anything but the same? How can music possess an anesthetic quality that “quiets” the raging torrent, when it is already a copy of that inferno? Perhaps Schopenhauer shouldn’t have eliminated the representation aspect of art when it comes to music.

Summary

There are two readings of a text: the surface, where the actual words of the text are analyzed, and the symptomatic, where the problematic that enlighten or regulate the actual meaning of the text is identified and clarified. The text’s problematic is the horizon of the text, of its thoughts, the “forms in which problems must be posed.” This horizon is the limit of the language and the concepts that were available for Schopenhauer at a certain historical period. What makes symptomatic readings very insightful is its transcendental status, for the problematic constitutes the definite condition of the possibility of the theoretical structure of the text. Schopenhauer was limited to the concepts and the language that is derived from the problematic that was already present.

However, given the mastery of the German language and the relentless precision of the thought, identifying what Schopenhauer meant by looking at what he did not say seems a fruitless exercise. As a “thoroughly explicit writer,” Schopenhauer maximized the style and the significance of his language in order to deliver the philosophy. In the introduction to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, George Simmel is correct that a “creative interpretation” of Schopenhauer is not possible, unlike Kant, Spinoza and Leibniz and others.

Volume 2 contains more technical elaborations and extensions, and I intend to finish it some time in the future, likely after I finish tackling Feuerbach and Stirner. Here are several reasons why Schopenhauer’s philosophy is breathtaking and a fascinating reprieve from the staid and stodgy crap peddled in the universities. He wrote very clear, simple, directly, and never without force, always animated and suffused with personality. On top of such loquacity, he also was erudite, possessing a remarkable grasp of the classics. Schopenhauer arrived at the same conclusions as the eastern thinkers but through the road of the western philosophers, and was the very first to actually represent their insights to the western audience but clothed in the garb of philosophy rather than mystic balderdash. The philosophy’s central concern was with existence, the tragedies and the problems of life, which is far more significant than the scholastic quibbles of ivory tower residents. Instead of chickening out like most thinkers by painting an all-harmonious portrait of the universe that resolved the petty differences into a shallow smudge, Schopenhauer took the actual sufferings of people seriously, all the brief instances of passions, emotions, all the fucking, the shitting, the eating, the fighting, the drinking, etc. He corrected the mistakes of the last great thinker, Kant and made several advances beyond his epistemology by claiming that inner experience is the key to knowing the thing-in-itself. Schopenhauer replaced Kant’s labyrinth program of concepts with a plausible model of the understanding: the principle of sufficient reason. The theory of aesthetic seems more penetrating than those of the other philosophers, except probably Nietzsche’s, and possibly, because he did not succumb to the temptation of reducing art to superficial functionalism. Schopenhauer’s sense of morality and philosophy of religion retains much of the insights of the major religions, yet he was a staunch atheist, and the first of all philosophers to be openly so. The previous ones, Hobbes and Hume, couldn’t afford such political suicide, so they kept quiet or spoke cryptically. Most importantly, the pessimist’s philosophy anticipates a great deal of Darwin and Freud and Einstein, where he recognized that nature always favored the species over the individual, (because the species is everything and the individual, nothing), that the sexual impulse was omnipotent, that the consciousness was a latecomer to the scene of evolution – just the tip of the iceberg of the psyche – and that everything in the universe is fundamentally a force, since energy and matter are indistinguishable at the subatomic level. Finally, Arthur Schopenhauer was none other than the greatest philosophical influence of the two major thinkers of the 20th century, Nietzsche and Wittgenstein. In order to understand both, you must read Schopenhauer.

After completing the first edition, Schopenhauer summed up the reception of his book: “I dispatch [the world as will] calmly resigned to the fact that it, too, will fully endure the fate which truth has suffered at all times, with only a brief victory celebration between the two prolonged periods where it is condemned as paradoxical and disparaged as trivial.” (Preface, first edition) The paradox is in his era the metaphysicians of the absolute actually resurrected the thing-in-itself and in doing so, they regressed from the transcendental critique to transcendent sophisms. Instead, Schopenhauer turns from transcendental philosophy, but away from transcendence, and towards a nihilistic conclusion where existence, or being, is essentially, the blind will, utterly purposeless. The triviality is the obvious reductionism of the natural sciences where nothing lies beneath the phenomenal world, and Schopenhauer’s discovery of the metaphysical answer, the will, is all-too-often misunderstood. In closing, I leave you with the words of the “Last German:” “A philosophy in between the pages of which one does not hear the tears, the weeping, the gnashing of teeth and the terrible din of mutual universal murder is no philosophy.”

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World as Will and Representation: Appendix

by Awet on April 17, 2006 at 9:51 am
Posted In: Philosophy, Schopenhauer

Appendix: Critique of Kantian metaphysics

Schopenhauer devoted the final section of the first volume to a thorough critique of Kantian metaphysics. The critique was intended in order to highlight the greatness of Kant and the quote by Voltaire said it all: It is the privilege of true genius, and especially genius who opens up a new path, to make great mistakes with impunity. Plato and the Hindu are the other intellectual muses, but Kant is the chief golden calf Schopenhauer genuflects before in the majority of the World as Will and Representation, and at the end of the book, he wields the hammer of Uru to clear away the rusty flakes. It is much easier to point out the faults and errors in the work of a great mind than to give a clear and complete exposition of its value. (WWR p. 415)

Interestingly, Schopenhauer often laments Kant’s decision to edit his great work, The Critique of Pure Reason, in an overreaction to the charges of naïve idealism. As explained in Book I, representation is compatible with Kant’s transcendental idealism, where the spatial, temporal forms are how the objects in experience are (re)presented, and the basic structure of the concepts we think and judge with and the category of causality are the reflection of the structure of our perception or concept of reality. Nonetheless, when Kant argued that TI prevents us from having any knowledge of the thing-in-itself, Schopenhauer disagreed and insisted that our experience of willing is actually the mode of access to the nature of reality that complements our spatial/temporal/causal framework for representing objects.

The chief reason for the disagreement between Kant and Schopenhauer lie with their choices of method: Schopenhauer agreed with Kant to the extent that we do have transcendental knowledge of the fundamental conditions of experience, but did not share in Kant’s convictions that transcendental knowledge is dependent on transcendental proofs or arguments. That is why Schopenhauer says we are not bound by Kant’s conclusions about the limits of knowledge and advocated a more practical method that dances close to Hume’s empiricism and Husserl’s phenomenology where direct experience indicates a dual approach to understanding it: the representations of spatiotemporal objects, and the capacity to will. Kant’s method of discovering the fundamental principles of knowledge as a special sort of reflection is mistaken, for we can know this through direct and immediate scrutiny of our experience.

“An essential difference between Kant’s method and that which I follow is to be found in the fact that he starts from indirect, reflected knowledge, whereas I start from direct and intuitive knowledge. He is comparable to a person who measures the height of a tower from its shadow; but I am like one who applies the measuring rod directly to the tower itself.” (WWR I, p. 452-453)
Thus, Schopenhauer’s transcendental philosophy dispenses with transcendental proofs. Schopenhauer continues: “Philosophy, therefore is for [Kant], a science of concepts but for me a science in concepts, drawn from the knowledge of perception, the only source of all evidence and set down and fixed in universal concepts.” (ibid, p. 453) Once Kant abandoned the realm of perception, he errs magnificently especially when he insisted that all the abstract categories of logical theory must be present in our knowledge of objects.

The main charge Schopenhauer lies at Kant’s feet is the complete lack of any distinction between abstract and discursive knowledge and intuitive knowledge. (WWR I p. 473) Yet, later on Schopenhauer then criticizes Kant for making that very distinction. Recall the famous dictum, “Thoughts without content are empty; intuition without concepts are blind,” which means there is no possible cognition of objects unless the two are combined. Schopenhauer says Kant blundered by bringing “thinking into perception,” meaning an object is not perceived meaningfully until it is thought. Nevertheless, we do not think in order to see an object, for no reflection is required at all. Yet Kant actually says that the concept emerges spontaneously, not deliberately.

Schopenhauer is quick to dismiss Kant’s categories as a sham; given the sole function of the understanding is causality. Moreover, Schopenhauer argued that all twelve categories are reducible to causality. This seems problematic, for we cannot think about causality without the notion of substance. The thought of something being caused already includes a substance of some kind. We are also incapable of thinking of causality without the assumption that all substances must behave in the same way under the same circumstances. we cannot think of causality without having the notion of quality. One could argue that Schopenhauer did not reject the categories altogether, but instead he took causation as the function that connects separate perceptions of distinct objects, a function that conditions perception of objects. The categories or the capacity of making judgments is secondary to perception because they are aspects of reason, which is in itself entirely parasitical on the originary cognitive activity of perception.

Animals do have knowledge of objects via perception, despite lacking the ability of making judgments. Therefore the forms of judgments are structured by reflection, a secondary cognitive activity.

“Forms of categorical judgment is nothing but the form of the judgment in general,” i.e., the form of the abstract expression of the knowledge of objects, which is founded on perception. “Disjunctive judgments spring from the law of thought of the excluded middle… therefore entirely the property of reason.” (WWR, I p. 459) they show the basic form of the activity of comparing objects in the abstract. Schopenhauer concludes that all forms of judgments and the categories are the inherent structures of the activity of abstract thought.

To which Kant might’ve conceded that the expression of abstraction is secondary to perception of the object, but he would’ve argued that we are capable of making judgments because of the synthetic nature of our conscious perception of objects – that which forms sensations as well as the conceptual structure.

Schopenhauer’s most enduring criticism of Kantian philosophy is on causation. For Kant, the knowledge of the determinate temporal order of objective states of affairs depend on the knowledge of causal laws whereas for Schopenhauer, the knowledge of the temporal succession is independent of any such condition, because it is already immediately given. This issue about the relation between the phenomenology of our experience of temporal order and the transcendental conditions of our experience remains unresolved today.

The kantian scholar Paul Guyer indicated three of Schopenhauer’s objections to Kant’s treatment of causality, that it marginalizes immediate perceptual knowledge for the sake of conceptual elements of the understanding:

  • 1. The sequence of perceptions are events and our knowledge of the sequence of these perceptions cannot and do not depend on the causal laws that entails change in these represented objects.
  • 2. The knowledge of the succession of states of affairs contain some earlier events that did not cause the later ones, so, the knowledge of succession does not depend on the knowledge of causality.
  • 3. Kant’s treatment of causation: Schopenhauer said that if the knowledge of temporal succession wasn’t immediate, but actually depends on the knowledge of the laws that determine the speed and timing of those successions, then we must have nearly unlimited knowledge of the causal laws.

Guyer defends against the first two objections to rest on a misunderstanding of Kant’s argument, and a failure of distinguishing between the phenomenological method and Kant’s transcendental method. Nevertheless, he admits that a reconstruction of Kant’s position must deal with the aforementioned third objection.

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