Being and quirkiness

The spirit of infancy

2010-09-30T12:29:00.000-07:00

Finally, one step ahead, one realizes that truth for the modern day westerner is on the one hand what makes a consensus and on the other hand what no one can deny, this second point implying the first. There exists in effect a primacy of negation: is considered to be true what one cannot deny. Moreover, in a certain number of cases, one cannot deny an assertion or its contrary. For example one cannot deny the existence of God or Gods non-existence. We consequently conclude that "It is not important to know whether God exists or not, what is important is the manner in which one believes or disbelieves".

It is also for this reason that mathematics seduce so much, are omnipresent and impose themselves as wisdom, for they prop themselves up on an aspect of intelligence and on a logic with a universal countenance. Can we demonstrate that 1+1=2? I don't think we can, but we cannot demonstrate the contrary. Therefore it is of little importance whether it is true or false, but what we can do with it, statistics, marketing etc.

I know a little chap who got an F in algebra because to the question "how much are 1 and 1", he would obstinately answer "1". So his mother, a bit bewildered and asking herself if he was not a bit slow, turned to him holding a tennis ball, then a second one, and asked him: "So now, this ball plus this ball, how many balls in the hands?, and he answered : "Two, of course! But that was not the question that the teacher asked! She did not say how much are 1 plus 1, she asked how much are 1 and 1! Yet 1 and 1 is 1 mom, just like you and you is you, and moreover, you and you doesn't mean anything since it is already all of you in you! The little chap had already understood what One is and what a transcendental is! In fact, I have oft noticed that children are much better metaphysicians than many adults who are perverted in their intelligence. This is the spirit of youth which we hear of here and there, which is not infantilism. The child always seeks the "why" of things, and he is right to do so, for that's really all that is interesting, whereas the adult does not cease to bog himself down in the "how" of things. It is the adult who is infantile!

Now then, what is worrying is that negation is at the heart of what is considered by the modern westerner as true. One should imo scratch quite a bit around that spot.

The road less travelled

2010-07-31T04:51:00.001-07:00

The more I ponder over it, the more the answer to the question "Why do so few attain substance?" becomes clearer; bear with me for a second.

1) To begin, one must let go of "I am" to get to "This is". That's the first stage, and obviously it eliminates all those who haven't sharpened their pencil; that is to say about 80%.

2) Then, face to face with "This is", one must abstract "is". Here, you have another 15% who get sidetracked.

3) There are only 5% left who, in front of the abstraction of "is" must now set forward the interrogation: "What is being as being"? Amongst those who have surmounted the first two obstacles, more than half drop off - only 2% remain in the race.

4) Then, in front of this interrogation, one must let go of the abstraction of step 2, in other words the universal being, the being of reason, go beyond logic, that is beyond the "thinking the being", further than the artistic or poetic or mathematical approach, and practically all of the contemporary elite, turn here indefinitely in circles, Heiddegger, Levinas, Husserl, Jacques Maritain... they are subjugated by being in their thought, and they never come back to the concrete and reality. That's where the big divide plays out amongst people who think, with the following choice: either intelligence dominates being, or being dominates intelligence. In Antiquity, single-handedly and foremost, Aristotle accepts to revert to experience and to be dominated by being.

There are only 000,1% left: 1 in 100.000.

5) These few come back to reality with "I am", the "I" being the most perfect modality of the "This(is)" that each of us experiment. There, finally, they discover soul, then substance. Yet there are still a good few who don't get past soul, to substance, like Saint Augustine.

We have 0000,1% left, 1 in 1.000.000.

This is curious, for the contemporary figures which I admire the most, notably artists, all fall at stage 4.

What I don't understand is why metaphysics should absolutely be art? The big obstacle is in effect that of stage 4, which equates metaphysics and logic (or art, it's essentially the same). When one adopts an artistic viewpoint, one does not do metaphysics, and vice versa, when one does metaphysics, one does not do art. I admit I do not understand how we have managed to make a rivalry out of these two touches... as if we absolutely wanted not to differentiate two vital activities, like to sleep and to eat for example. I don't quite understand the thing about absolutely wanting to mix the two, possibly to the point where they become mortal enemies; this is quite curious really.

The majority don't get past stage 1, they stop at "I am", most often in a very infantile way, for if the Cartesian spirit has found its way into the bloodstream of Westerners, not everyone is Descartes either, who was a cretin but certainly no idiot! :)

Credit image: Frost by Chapin

Back to the sources

2010-06-13T07:09:00.000-07:00

Following on the "Two sources" post, an e-conversation between Avatar and another web-user.

Aqua: "I think for you there are the "realist" philosophers who see the truth and the others who make nice constructions which inspire respect but who are as far away from truth as can be. Tell me if I am mistaken?"

Avatar: What is true? It is what is, isn't it? Do you agree, Aqua, that what is true is what is? If you do, you must conclude that a construction of the spirit, which truly exists, in the spirit, but truly exists, is thus true! Therefore how do we manage if we start with the spirit which is separated? We can't, so it's well and truly with external experience that one must start, with what is not oneself. If we start firstly with the spirit, or the relations produced by the spirit, we find ourselves in an area of maximum confusion between what is (and which is not ourselves) and what is in ourselves and which we will then project over reality. Descartes sentence "I think therefore I am" is correct! It is quite evident that by experimenting that I think I can conclude that I exist, but what is horrific, is that Descartes decrees, quite explicitly, that his thought is solely reliable and objective, not at all what is real, which can be a source of error, and that in consequence one must set ones idea before what is real, as the first stone of all philosophical research. In this way, Descartes is the father of modern ideologies... for what is not mentionned very often is that he greatly influenced Marx, Freud and a good few others.

Aqua: "You say you take Aristotle out of the picture? So who are the realist philosophers who adhere to your school of thought?"

Avatar: I know a few of them, who are alive, but it is certain that the realist approach does not have a huge following, as the intuitive and poetic approach is far more appealing. It is wearisome to read someone like Aristotle, it is almost drudgery, it is drawn out, without poetry... whereas Plato is absolutely delightful! Thus to answer your question, I do not see many famous philosophers who have gone as far as Aristotle down the path of realistic thought. Many have tried to find something else, and since he has gone very far down this path, they naturally wrote a philosophy of spirit.

I thus see two reasons why so few "celebrities" have put forward a realistic thought, in Aristotle's footsteps: 1) It is wearisome 2) Aristotle has taken it very far, and it is not via this route that one can invent and claim some fame; the first role is already taken.

Moreover, I don't have an interest in Aristotle per se!! Thought does not belong to Aristotle, thought belongs to man, it is a common good!! What Aristotle discovered does not belong to him, even if he is the father of realist thought!! It is a concept which belongs to an author, not what is real, which belongs to all!! Thus one must choose: either one wants to invent a completely new way of thinking under the premise that realistic thought is a concept, either we seek truth, and use predecessors as indicators, without ever dispensing oneself from reverifying or rediscovering, or not, what they have discovered! I say this to stress once more that I do not speak of Aristolianism. And I am not a professor! I seek the truth! Thus I am no more Aristolian than Avatarian! What is true is neither to the left nor to the right, neither red nor blue: it is! Lol

Aqua: "This philosophy based on a construction of the spirit that substitutes itself to being is that what you call a philosophy of relation? I see nothing synonymous between these two expressions."

Avatar: What does human intelligence produce if not relations? Can you show me something other than relations that is produced by intelligence? Either intelligence contemplates or it produces relations. This is precisely why I say that at the start of any philosophical thought, either we admit that being is what falls first in intelligence (contemplation) or we create relations. So you could retort that Aristotle never ceased to create relations, that he even wrote the Organon, which is a treatise on logic, all right, I agree, but he did so after having chosen, accepted and sought to look at reality as imposing itself to him, which changes everything! Consequently, there are well and truly only two starting points to philosophy, a philosophy of being, and one of relation.

Aqua: "Another question: is it unthinkable that the concept of being could be a construct of the spirit? This question must be asked if one desires to orientate oneself in philosophy."

Avatar: Of course it is possible, this is what Heidegger did! But I am not speaking of the concept of being (which is not being), I speak of being. So I agree with you, this begets immediately a question which has far reaching consequences and which is this one: given that it is I who knows and that there is no adequacy between reality and my knowledge of this reality, how does one know this reality since to know it one must know how one is known. This is the reason for which everything starts with "this is" (and not "I am"). That is to say with the judgement of existence pertaining to a reality that is not me and that has a "this" and an "is", i.e. a signification of reality (this) and an apprehension (is). Everything plays out there, right at the start. So each and everyone chooses, more or less consciously for that matter, but that's where it happens, and the ramifications are rather extensive downstream.

Image:

A spectacular firework

2010-04-17T02:09:00.000-07:00

After having started by confounding substance and the individual, Descartes explicitly turns his back on Aristotle, followed later on by Hegel... with Hegel came dialectics and the primacy of relation.

We thus have forgotten that substance is the indirect source of relation. One could say that relation is the granddaughter of substance, its daughter being quality. If we truly understood relation we would paddle up to the grandmother - substance - and this would help us to understand its necessity... at least it would be easier to grasp it than in a direct manner. In lieu of which, we have thrown grandmother off the train!

We started with substance and we magnified relation and the relative, setting off a spectacular firework, but we are only left with smoke and an odor of burning. Contemporary philosophy knows no principles; it can't teach us anything; it only carries breezes which give the neuron a cold.

Now relation is literally asinine when it seeks to take the place of substance. Hence the world is an asinine place.

In the last analysis, there are only two ways to go about it, either we start with relation to go to substance, or we start with relation to decapitate substance. There are presently two philosophies on the market, not three, two: to divide philosophy into philosophy of spirit on the one hand and philosophy of relation on the other hand is a delusion, for what does human intelligence do if not abstract, thus produce the universal, and what is the universal if not a relation? Thus there lays the choice, because we well and truly have to start with relation: either one starts with relation to go to substance (and it is not handy for one must paddle counter current and the descending current is quite fierce), or one does as everyone else: you start with relation, you head dunk grannie, and you let yourself drift down the current whilst splashing amongst the corpses.

Well then, we have no choice! We must go back to Aristotle to see how he looks at relation, and also take a peek at Hegel. Between the two there is Descartes, but it doesn't take too long to walk around that diminutive thinker. Conversely, one must absolutely go back to Aristotle and spend a bit of time with Hegel, for he is the father of all contemporary dialectics.
Credit image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aussiegall/463819664/

Time

2010-02-26T17:50:00.001-08:00

Time is a measure of movement, hence of becoming. Why is there becoming? Because every potential being is entirely relative to a being in act which it is attracted to, and that it is through becoming that being in potency meets being in act.

Therefore, not only being in potency is not being, rather a modality of being, the most tenuous at that, it is not anymore becoming. However, it is through becoming that being in potency attains its end by joining being in act.

It follows that being in act is anterior to being in potency from the point of view of perfection, which is the inverse of the (genetic) viewpoint of becoming, where being in potency precedes being in act.

I thus conclude that being is anterior to becoming, and that becoming only exists through being, which manifests itself through the present moment, since only the present moment exists, for neither the past nor the future exist.

The present moment is the victory of Act over Potency, thus of Being over Becoming... an ephemeral victory at that.

Gypsy swing

2010-01-04T14:35:00.000-08:00

2004. Bireli Lagrene. You will realize, when you listen to him, why it did not take me long to understand that this prodigious kid would necessarily become an international star.

Later on he revealed himself capable of understanding a music piece in less time than is required to write it… and he played and plays today with anybody without difficulty. Obviously he never studied music, that is how it is taught in the “Conservatoire”. He does not read partitions for example. He plays everything by ear.

Around 16 years of age he listens to Georges Benson, Jimmy Hendrix, Frank Sinatra, American jazz and he absorbs everything at a phenomenal speed. What is more, he works the violin, the bass... Soon he escapes to the US and plays everywhere with Jaco Pastorius, the most famous virtuoso bassist of the time. At age 24, Biréli has assimilated all American music and jazz. He can play with the best.

He has, for around the last 2 years, started a group which plays the themes of Django. In the group there are gypsies but also the son of… Jacques Dutronc. How long will Biréli stay in this line? Probably not too long, the danger for him being to be completely absorbed, body and soul, and thus to be squelched in a certain sense, by the spirit of “show business”…

Imagination IV

2010-01-02T04:08:00.000-08:00

When we are engulfed by imagination, we lose the sense of reality, hence of quality. It is important to see that it is through reality that we attain quality, and through quality that we attain reality... not at all through imagination! We have so much difficulty in inducing substance that it is always possible to slide into a figurative mode, whereas quality puts us in direct contact with reality. In fact, substance is completely overlooked in today's world; not only do we replace it by relation of reason (i.e . the "universal", One from the multiple, Being as an abstraction) but we don't distinguish relation of reason and real relation. Hence, we cannot discover what realism is, as relation dispenses of distinguishing between realism and idealism.

In the order of Being, if we do not ask the question what is the is of the judgement of existence "this is" (i.e. what is Being), our experiences are always susceptible of being idealized and of being enveloped by our imagination. Why do quantity and imagination often go hand in hand? In my view, it is because quantity has no limits. Incidentally, quantity plays a huge role in psychology. To let oneself be taken down the river of quantity can give us a thrill not unlike that of rafting. In any case, one can well measure the difference between the Freudian and the Aristolian vision... for the former, our sleep and our vegetative life are the peak of the human person, whereas for the latter the peak is the spiritual soul: intelligence and will in act.

Credit image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/h-k-d/

Imagination III

2009-12-21T04:41:00.000-08:00

Imagination is borne of the body. It is what is most subtle in it. It indubitably comes from it for it is grounded in our senses (hence the body). Without a body, no imagination. Hey, do you realize "angels" don't have an imagination!? Hard to imagine, huh? :wink:

It's a curious thing because imagination proceeds from the body and at the same time it seeks to separate itself from it.That's what imagination and virtuality are: a world that could exist but doesn't; a world that proceeds from reality but that is not reality.

There is an affective virtuality, a mathematical virtuality, a scientific virtuality, an artistic virtuality. It is because this make believe world, which once more doesn't exist but could exist, proceeds from me that I like it so much and that it often interests me much more than reality itself.

In short, however this subject warrants a much longer development, the body, hence imagination, is terribly limited, but it is positive in as much as it enables the soul to live of sensibility. That will be all for today. At ease! ;-)

Credit image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/h-k-d/

Dialogue with God

2009-12-06T12:16:00.000-08:00

Dialogue with "God" on Dialogus2.org

Avatar: ...while I'm at it, ill give you my viewpoint on euthanasia. Given that I cannot stand to see others suffer, I am in favor of local euthanasia dispensed in priority to those who suffer confronted to the suffering of others. Like that it will only be necessary to take care of those who suffer without having to be bothered by those who don't suffer. Me for example, if a family member dies, I have asked for some local euthanasia beforehand... for I do not want to suffer unnecessarily, nor lose my dignity for that matter. It is not only liberty which stops at the moment where that of the others begins, you too may I point out!

God: Only the suffering of those who are close to you make you suffer?

Avatar: It is a question which is absent of you. I suggest the following one. Who is close to you? It is in effect not customary for you to interest yourself in what is measurable and quantity, rather in what is not measurable and quality. It is even the first time I hear "solely" in your mouth. May this serve as a lesson, for now you are diabolically preoccupied by the fact that a suffering does not weigh enough.

God: there is much subjectivity in your words. What do you know of my "morals"? Why should I only be interested in what is not measurable? Why should measure be a quantity?

Avatar: Your morals? How do I know them? Don't be a snob please, as if we did not know each another! Jeepers! Why would you only be interested in what is not measurable? With what you pay me, do you really think you are the right one to ask me this?? Why should measure be quantity? That one is easy, because quantity is measurable. :)

God: hmmmmmm

Avatar: Don't pull that face!! No kidding, I find your strategy consisting in sending the ball back in a backhand crosscourt passing shot with "it is in your head that it is true" undertones a bit short. Short passing shot if you will. If I were in your sandals I would try to have a bit more fun. You have no excuse really! I would help them to a theology of the sea on its natural coulis of metaphysics. If you want my opinion, there is only you to ban religion. Hey, for example we spoke of humility, why didn't you answer: "Humility bores me. It has in common with arrogance that in both cases you speak of yourself." How did you say? Hmmmmmmm. Did I say that right?? :0)

Spiritual vs intellectual

2009-11-23T09:29:00.000-08:00

"Avatar" answering the question "should one distinguish between spiritual and intellectual...?"

It seems intelligence and spirit have fundamentally the same meaning: one speaks without distinction of human intelligence and human spirit... intelligence signifying what proceeds from human intelligence, and spiritual what comes from the human spirit.

From this objective consideration, and as is often the case when there are two synonymous terms, other meanings have been superimposed. We say intellectual, for example, when we wish to say non-manual, or university professor, or abstract, or someone whose feet are not grounded in reality, or even “mind-aching” (prise de tête). The same diversity exists with the word spiritual, which sometimes means humorous, or religious (this last term is in my view a quite equivocal falsehood), or even divine (“Gods” spirit), to distinguish between divine intelligence and human intelligence, etc.

As far as the distinction made by editors in their “Spirituality” collection, we have here, I think, a mistranslation (which I pointed out) between spiritual and religious. Yet, fundamentally, there is synonymity. I see here on the one hand a type of marketing gimmick which seeks a label which does not ruffle anyones feathers; on the other hand, one must recognize that these collections include everything and its opposite: religious considerations, psychoanalysis, astrology, clairvoyance, and what have you... Therefore, they include what purports to be a rather speculative reflection, which happens to correspond to the first sense of “intellectual”.

I think the term intellectual is not used solely because the connotation is sometimes pejorative or mocking in nature; the same is true for the term “speculation”, which would turn away the clients who claim to be non-intellectual and pragmatic, concrete, with their feet solidly anchored in the ground! Hence “spiritual” is much more consensual, and in any case the term is gratifying. In short, “spiritual” signifies astute and clever, whereas “intellectual” can signify pretentious and pain-in-the-neck, which is evidently not the best pitch.

In brief, spiritual sounds “authentic” whereas intellectual has undertones of “concepts” or “ravings”. It is a bit foolish, but I think that is why it is so; a bit as why red and yellow are associated to biscuits, and why few of them are sold in a blue package. :-)

Fifth round

2009-11-17T03:09:00.000-08:00

It’s a classic, at the fifth round of drinks, someone gets up and says “if God knows in advance what I will freely decide, that means in truth that it was planned or written in advance, and this means that I am not free.”

So someone else asks “if "he" whom you call God exists, and if "he" is as you suppose eternal, why would "he" not know in advance what you will decide freely? For that would mean that "he " is not atemporal…”

Obviously, this creates a bit of discomfort, and usually the spotlight swings immediately to “and me, why don’t I know in advance what I will freely decide?”

Which then shows the desire to not be free, putting forward the following dialectic: “If I know ahead of time what I will decide freely later on, then I will freely choose the opposite, or at least something else, just to experience what it will do. Yet I cannot decide to do differently or the contrary of what I ignore!”…

Thus the bloke answers that he would like to freely renounce his freedom, which is a sophism evidently... therefore, we find ourselves in front of the following assertion: “I am not free to not be free”, that is to say in front of two consecutive negations.

But does saying “I am free to be free” make any sense? Not really any more than the preceding double negation, for “I am free” is enough, and we don’t clearly see what “to be free” adds. In consequence, it seems that a freedom which contemplates itself should necessarily and logically lead to its suicide, bogged down in a sort of perverse effect: I request not to be free”. Just as if that was the only choice. Curious isn’t it?

This shows that freedom is not an end in itself, and also that when one seeks to make a transcendental out of it, we kill it. I wonder if that is not what we do when we carry to the rank of transcendental whatever else that is not one, like beauty for example. I mean by this that I wonder if to make a transcendental out of beauty doesn’t also, sooner or later, lead to negate beauty. Finally, instead of creating, that is when one assimilates oneself to "he" whom religious traditions call “God”, what we mostly know what to do, is destroy lol

What characterizes contemporary thought is negation. Aristotle is the friend of wisdom in as much as he starts by admiring, even that which is reputed to be self-evident. Aristotle is the philosopher of admiration. The contemporaries are for the most part the buffoons of doubt and of negation. It is Descartes who pulled the first punch: “I think, therefore I doubt, and therefore I am”… Geez! 

It is because of Descartes that all of contemporary thought is a saloon-bar philosophy.

Never vanquished

2009-11-14T11:38:00.000-08:00

Should you ask people around you what truth is, you will mostly be told that it depends on your conception of truth. If you insist and point out that what exists or not is entirely oblivious to any opinion one may have of it as far as being or not being, you will, without more ado, be singled out as sectarian. You will be told that you are trying to impose your ideas, exactly as if reality was an idea. Now then, whether or not you seek to impose what you think neither affects error nor truth, and consequently it is well and truly postulated that reality does not exist outside the idea you make of it. Not to consent to the relativity of reality constitutes in many places a form of raging intolerance. To accept that each and everyone can express his opinion is one thing, something important, for sure, but on the other hand truth also deserves to be upheld. :)

A suicide of intelligence

2009-09-18T15:16:00.000-07:00

These days you are not understood if you say that the primacy of being has been substituted by nothingness. Most people stare at you with a dazed look. Yet, for anyone who has the slightest inkling of metaphysics, it is obvious that being primes over non-being, and that it is well and truly being which is, before nothingness… despite Jean-Saul Partre and the cortege of logy intellectuals of the 20th century. Thus negation has taken front stage, in all spirits, even those of the blockheads.

In short, if one is no longer understood on a metaphysical level, one can nevertheless clearly distinguish the primacy of negation concerning the human person and freedom. In this day and age, in the person we firstly see someone who is ailing (thanks to the psychocretins & co who have reduced the human person to personality), and in freedom the capacity to say “no”, that is to say the most infantile vision of things.

Thus we find the three poles where lies the solution to any problem (the person, truth, freedom) absolutely poisoned by negation: truth is firstly nothingness, the person is firstly ailing, and freedom is firstly saying “no”. If that is not a suicide of intelligence, it strangely resembles it, for what “falls” first in intelligence is being, not non-being, which figures the absence of being, thus the destruction through despair of intelligence, memory and will. Hence, we claim to fecund the spirit firstly with nothingness, that’s a good one, for it is exactly as hallucinating as a farmer who would sow “nothing” whilst prophesizing an unparalleled crop.

Roots of ideologies

2009-09-06T08:43:00.000-07:00

Nietzsche, in my opinion, was an artist bestowed with a prodigious capacity to love and with an … unflinching jealousy, jealousy consisting certainly, in its most speculative and humanely sublime form, in looking for a master over which to dominate.

Ultimately, if we wish to separate the poets from the philosophers, contemporaneous or not, and precisely identify the sources of ideologies, even to hatch a few, it is quite simple. I know three means to go about it.

The first is to consider one of the seven dimensions of man which most of the worldly traditions lay out – the vegetative dimension, the animal dimension, the spiritual dimension, work, friendship, politics and religion – and to isolate one of these dimensions from the other six (one can also take 2 or 3 of them and mix them together, whilst separating them from the others, or even endeavour to exclude one of them and only consider the 6 remaining ones). For example, Marx and Nietzsche exalted (admittedly in quite different ways) work or the artistic activity as being the only acceptable way to save man and humanity. Kant exalted the religious dimension and morals, etc.

The second means consists in taking the three poles at the center of which rests the answer to any problem – Truth, The Human Person and Liberty – and in the same way as in what preceeds, to isolate one of the three. For example, Sartre isolates Liberty and veneers it for its own sake, etc.

The third is even more efficient, as it is more hidden to blunt intelligences. Take the 5 transcendentals (transcendental = notion which is convertible to Being) : Esse (Being), Aliquid (Something), Verum (Truth), Unum (One) and Bonum (Good). I’m showing you the general technique here, without entering into any detail, because we may end up getting spotted! LoL Firstly, note that "beauty" is not a transcendental, even though it has been exalted as such and is still exalted in this manner. Many people do not understand for example how the concentration camp SS could listen to the quatuors of Mozart during their dinner… as if beauty finalizes! Beauty is relative to the transcendentals and can be separated from them.

All right, but even more devious, only Being is an authentic transcendental, it is the keystone, and the four other transcendentals are acolytes of Being. Those who have a metaphysical touch understand this, the others stare blankly, persuaded that all this has no interest at all or is not concrete, even though we are well and truly at the heart of the most real reality.

Therefore, if one seeks to identify the source of all the deliriums and monstrosities that human intelligence is capable of, sometimes with much talent, one only needs to isolate one of the 4 transcendentals relative to Being (Aliquid, Verum, Unum, Bonum) and to consider it as separated from Being. You will have there a formidable tool to manipulate the fools and seduce the intellectuals. This approach is obviously the name of the game, the other two being more immediate and straightforward. :P

Aerobics

2009-08-21T05:53:00.000-07:00

In the last analysis, love consists in stooping down whereas art consists in stepping up... and we are no more an artist by stooping down than we love by stepping up, which means, if you are still following, that we do not stoop down by stepping up nor do we step up by stooping down. Evidently, evidently... The most distressing are those who crawl with their head high up, but that's another story. :)

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/juanmaiz/

A logical question

2009-08-14T03:56:00.000-07:00

A little (pre-arranged) conversation between myself and "Avatar". "I think you" means "you are the subject of my thoughts".

Good day all,

If I write this proposition: I think you, therefore you are. Can I logically deduce the following one : I don't think you, therefore you are not?

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The answer is YES, I can logically deduce the second affirmation from the first, but I must add "in my mind" in both cases. The sequence is therefore "I think (of) you, therefore you are (exist) in my mind. Consequently, if I don't think (of) you, you are not (don't exist) in my mind."

However, if one does not precise "in my mind" the first proposition is already false because there is no necessary link between the fact that I think something (necessarily in ones mind) and the existence of this thing elsewere than in ones mind.

If you agree with this cursory analysis, you must conclude that any reality which is not in your mind transcends your mind. If you do not agree, then there is no difference for you between "to exist" and "to exist in your mind".

Hello,

Your answer has hit me in the face to a point you can not imagine. Now I understand that Descartes in fact said "I think, therefore I am in my head". This changes everything. I now feel freed from my cartesian chains!

Harvey

Harvey,

I am pleased to hear your Harry Houdini type evasion has been successful. Without a doubt there is something akin to prestidigitation in Descartes formula, which starts in full immanence (I think) and dreams of spewing out a transcendence (therefore I am).

Avatar

Credit image: Fritz at Hikingartist.com

Peripaticians

2009-08-08T05:09:00.000-07:00

Impromptu online discussion on the subject of the source of modern Western human thought, Aristotle and his metaphysics.

The radical difference between Plato and Aristotle is that the former considers his personal and interior experience to come first, whereas the latter looks firstly at reality which is exterior to him (obviously this is less poetic!). It is fashionable to consider Plato to be a philosopher, even though he is more of a poet of the soul, and to denigrate Aristotle whom we find less amusing, and moreover whose musings are not as easily accessible. In particular, Aristotle is criticized for his theory on the spontaneous generation, his treatise on the heavens which today seems rather infantile, etc., as if this chap were a scientist… but Aristotle was first and foremost a philosopher, and was only interested in science “accidentally”, using the tools of his time!

This preference for Plato is linked to the poetry of his discourse, to the exaltation of intimacy and interiority (immanent and immediate experience), to his explanations which are often metaphorical… He has always exerted a great seduction, which is normal as he is a poet, whereas Aristotle is hardly poetic, and is sometimes lacking in humor! William of Ockam, in the 14th century, gave a new life to Plato; later Descartes brought him to the forefront, and practically permanently! Later still, some mystics like Simone Weil expressed their love of Plato and their aversion for Aristotle. It is too bad really, and this probably proceeds more from ignorance than discernment. In particular, Plato held women to be slightly more evolved than animals, and without a soul. It is Aristotle who was the first in Ancient Greece to speak of friendship – philia – between man and woman, returning dignity to women by elevating them to the rank of human beings, on an equal footing to men… I’m not certain Simone Weil knew that, and even less so for many unconditional contemporary admirers of Plato!

So one must read “Nicomacian Ethics… which is a simple book, much more so than the treatise on the soul or the treatise on metaphysics. Aristotle is the first to have given a real metaphysics to the Western world, i.e. a science beyond physics, what he called “first philosophy”, but what was later named meta-physics (beyond physics) for this treatise was found, after his death, on his bookshelves, just after his book on physics. Today one must speak of “first philosophy”... if you speak of metaphysics, you get penalty points… even if they are one and the same thing! Being that we have celebrated the death of metaphysics, this shouldn't come as that much of a surprise! :)

So, in two words if possible, what is Aristotle’s metaphysics? Precisely because he distinguishes himself from his master Plato (whom he followed for 15 years, in silence), who set thought before reality, Aristotle sets reality before the idea he makes of it, and he does this through what some call the judgement of existence”: THIS IS. One must note that in the fundamental assertion “This is”, the “this” is not “me”… !!! This is the radical difference with the notorious “I think, therefore I am” of Descartes, who sets the “I” before the “this”, or the internal experience before the perceived external reality, in other words sincerity before truth.

Consequently, Aristotle seeks foremost reality as it is other than himself and which is unmindful of the idea he makes of it to be what it is. He then looks at what intelligence is, where it comes from, what it is made of, according to what model and in view of what, five interrogations which can be associated to his five senses: what it is (sight); where it comes from (hearing); what it is made of (touch), according to which model (taste), and in view of what it is (smell). To answer your question more concretely, it is obvious that seeking what is true entails a constant back and forth between our sensible touch of reality and intelligence, in other words a perpetual round trip between the abstraction of reality through the senses, delivering the observation to intelligence, and reinjecting into reality what I understand of it, to verify the adequacy between my intelligence and reality. Thus, for Aristotle, truth is the adequacy between intelligence and reality. Well, it isn’t easy to speak of these “things” in a few lines… We’ll speak again, hopefully… and it is important to have fun around this neck of the woods, is it not? :))

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Aesthetics

2009-07-23T09:18:00.000-07:00

The word aesthetics is not so old. I believe it was coined by Kant, borrowing on the the Greek eitésis, which signifies sensation. We find the same root in other words, like "an-esthesia", which means absence of sensation.

Consequently, aesthetics, in the first instance, is what procures a sensation. Now, many impute to beauty or aesthetics a moral value. In other words, they persuade themselves that beauty is necessarily concomitantly good. It is not very difficult to show that they err. If beauty is in effect what procures a sensation, there have been for example many an aestheticism linked to perverse ideologies or frightful dictatorships. Moreover, aesthetics seems in those cases to carry more importance: colossal architecture, apocalyptic music, magnificent uniforms, quite spectacular ceremonies and public reunions, solemn literature, etc.

Hence, beauty has no finality of itself. In other words, it is not sufficient or capable of itself to lead to the completion of the human person. It is ordered to something other than itself. Without redeveloping here an entire metaphysics, some would hang the phone up, lol, we can nevertheless try to look at that towards which beauty is ordered.

In Greek philosophy, but also in other philosophies, like Hindu metaphysics for example, there are 5 recognized transcendentals. A transcendental is what suffices to itself, or what does not have any cause other than itself, or again what is finalized by itself and attracts the rest in as much as it is precisely first cause and final cause (which is absolutely not the case of beauty, and this well and truly constitutes one of the major errors of the contemporaries who elevate beauty to the rank of transcendental. Beauty is an errant cause of sorts, neither good nor bad of itself, it all depends on what it is associated to…).

In reality, Being is THE transcendental par excellence, but since Being is also aliquid (something), and since Being is true, and since Being is one (indivisible), and finally since Being is good, we turned aliquid, truth, one and good into four other full-fledged transcendentals, which isn’t wrong, but those four are in reality more like acolytes of Being. In other words, they are four other ways of naming Being.

Furthermore, as we quite rapidly ceased to understand what One is, we substituted it by Beauty, which is a singularly toxic error, the consequences of which are massive. This has lead including to physical massacres... for beauty ultimately substituted itself to good by veiling it and by sometimes justifying the most horrifying acts (not always, let's not exaggerate either).

Nonetheless, we must recognize that beauty is typically human. Animals do not make art or craft. Art and craft are one of the ways of differentiating man from beast. The animal does not wear ornaments, or clothes, which confers to clothing a foremost value of aestheticism, maybe even before any notion of moral value or modesty. :)

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Symbolism

2009-07-18T15:10:00.000-07:00

What is a symbol? There are a good few who revel in the word with a knowing air, and who make it a speciality of theirs or even consider themselves to be a quasi occult elite.

The root of the word is strong, it is the same as in the word symbiosis, sympathetic, etc. All right, let's cut the chase, a symbol is something that unites the visible and the invisible. Well I think it's time we said something about it that is not solely idiotic. It is not easy to pinpoint what a symbol is. As we practically only have the root to move forward with, it is tempting to seek its inverse or contrary. Now the contrary of “sym” is “dia”, as in dialysis. Now pay attention, this is where it gets amusing, watch: therefore, what is the strict contrary of symbolic (symbolique)? Yep, you got that right: diabolical (diabolique). On the one hand we have something that unites, and on the other something that divides.

So let us imagine your friend is sick, and just before the big jump, he gives you a present, with no monetary value, which he is holding in his outstretched hand. You have thus inherited something without value yet which is eminently symbolic, thus precious. Hence, the value of the object you have inherited lays not in its price but in what it represents - i.e. in its capacity to manifest a link between the visible and the invisible. Besides, if your friend had given you an expensive gift, what would make it foremost valuable would be no more its price, but what it represents, in other words its capacity to manifest a link between the visible and the invisible.

So what are we doing when we hold this object to be a trinket, or when we sell it because we can get some money for it? Well we disunite and divide, that is all, nothing more, but one should be honest and not hesitate to say it. We therefore radically trample a link. What good could we then expect for he who is at the other end of the link? When you knock your Hi-Fi with a hammer, are you surprised when it doesn't work as well? Well, some are surprised... Yes, positively, I assure you! Naturally, I do not speak of a case of force majeure, as when one is forced to sell an object laden with symbol because of a food shortage. In that case, in my view, the symbol would be even stronger, even without the object. :)

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The moderns

2009-06-30T05:18:00.000-07:00

Tolstoi in 1868

A modern is someone who does not distinguish the past, the present and the future. It seems silly to say this, yet it is true. What interests a modern in the past is the present; what interests him in the present is the future; and even, what interests him in the future is the present. This is why a modern has no chance of being understood or taken seriously. But he doesn't care, his public are the angels, some crazies of his time too, but mostly the angels.

A modern has nothing in common with a contemporary; he is quite incidentally contemporary. He borrows from his epoch, whereas a contemporary is borrowed by his epoch. A modern could be from any place at any period. Everyone has got that wrong. The contemporary cannot last: he is current news, burned by the moment, greased on the summer sand, the buzz of the town back from the beaches. In fact, a modern always gets on the wrong side of a contemporary, even if unwittingly, not surprisingly.

There are a few exceptions, like Frédéric Dard, who was clever enough to disguise himself as a yokel, made up as a jester. Dard was a mystic. Other than that, who are the moderns in literature for example? Artaud, Céline, Nietzsche, Bloy, Tolstoï, Dostoïevski, Shakespeare, maybe Cioran, there will be a handful in a few centuries. Sartre, Freud, Kant, Marx, for example, in two centuries we will come across them by mistake, and we will take them for the popular stand-up comedian of the moment, and vice versa.

Literary figures

2009-06-24T19:03:00.000-07:00

One of my late friends knew Emile Cioran as a young man. I was not so fortunate: when I read him for the first time, not so long ago, I decided to ring at his doorbell, before learning he had committed suicide a short time before. He had an incurable disease. A cancer I believe.

Cioran never asked the why of things, which he shied away from like the pest for a simple reason, and which I think is common to a good number of artists: he was terrified of losing himself if he became truly contemplative.

It is a false alternative, at least it seems to me to be a false alternative. We imagine that art is necessarily a revolt; I do not think this to be true. Revolt or bitterness are tempting from the standpoint of inspiration, as conflict fecunds imagination. However, I do not believe in this obsession with negation from the viewpoint of artistic creation. Obviously, to not believe in it is more comfortable: it is always easier to lean on asinity to create, if only because it is without limit... whereas to lean on nothing can be daunting, and even scary. I think Cioran was frightened of that. He preferred his talent to truth. He loved his talent above all.

This is not, for example, the case of Frederic Dard, who was a delicious and tender person. Dard didn't care much for his talent. He had read Louis-Ferdinand Céline and decided there was nothing serious to be done in literature; he had wanted to do what Céline had done, and it was done. I like Dard, the writer and the man. He touches me deeply. Through his SanAntonian deliriums seeps a rare person, moving, very cultivated, a subtle soul.

Ethics

2009-06-20T13:34:00.000-07:00

In reality, what Aristotle showed, and what few have since understood, is that ethics hinges on friendship! The main stages of ethics, which are hardly a “concept” or “customs” relative to a culture, but positively something that is universally human and natural:

1) Firstly I fall in love. At this stage, no one can do anything for me, not even me! I can not ask (myself) advice… That would mean whatever I was told “Hey Avatar, no, you’ve got it wrong, stop falling in love, come now, what are you doing?!!” No, at this stage, I undergo and I withstand.

2) Then I ask myself what is happening, and I judge if I should take it a step further or if it is best to make a run for it. Is this person “married”? I am “married”? What are the chances that this friendship can be long lasting? In short, I confer with myself ad I consider whether what attracts me is accessible or if I am taking a one way ticket to unhappiness or despair.

3) Further I ask myself if (to the extent that I have decided to take it a step ahead) what are the most appropriate means to attain my good, for the person that I love is MY good (I don’t delve here into the attitude of the other person, because obviously, in love, the vice versa is a requisite, and no one can be forced to love).

4) Then I step into action. It is the imperium, as when I decided to get up at 5 a.m. and that I prepared everything, and the alarm bell rings and I have to get up: now I must take action.

5) It is only at this stage that ethics spring up as a formalisation of PERSONAL behaviours in view of attaining a PERSONAL good as a sort of safeguard in view of taking action, i.e. of attaining MY good. Thus, Kant (for example) has ignored the first 4 stages, for it is only at this stage that the categorical moral imperative should appear, imperative which assails us. In truth, let’s be clear, 98% of good Catholics are Kantian as are 110% of Protestants!

6) It is only at this stage that justice appears, which is a universalization of individual morals, thus a moral extended to everyone else in as much as we recognize for them the possibility of living the same story as us. Moreover, and this is a parentesis, Muslims start here, at the 6th stage, for it is definitively justice which primes for them.

This begets the question, can we move from a common good to a personal good. The answer is no - at least that’s my opinion. That is also why I am dubious when I see that children in “personal difficulty” are “treated” by imposing a common good on them, presented as an individual good, even though they are devastated on a personal level. This is the same error that totalitarian ideologies such as communism make. We claim to save the person by diluting him in an encompassing whole… but we can not have a sense of the common good without one of our personal good. It’s impossible, lest we become a zombie, that is to say a living dead being.

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The metaphysical touch

2009-06-11T14:51:00.000-07:00

The metaphysical touch is to reality what an absolute ear is to music. If for example you strike a glass and you correctly recognize the sound as a B flat, you have an absolute touch. Those who do not have an absolute touch have a relative touch, and they consequently perceive essentially the intervals between the notes. For example, they hear in the same manner the series of three notes “do re mi” and the series of three notes “sol la si”: in both cases the intervals between the notes are the same. A metaphysical touch is therefore a type of absolute ear in the order of being, whereas a relative ear captures mostly modes, accidents and relations.

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Substance

2009-06-06T08:22:00.000-07:00

Question: in the act of knowledge, intelligence only grasping form, can we not deduct that substance is irreducibly inaccessible to it?

Answer: You write: “in the act of knowledge, intelligence only grasping form...”

Do we agree on what form is? A quick reminder on what is meant by “form”.. A form answers the question of “what is it”, or again “that by which what is exists as it exists”, and can thus beget diverse answers according to the order in which we interrogate this reality. For example, if I look at you in the order of intelligibility and ask myself what determines you firstly, I will say you are a human being. “Human being” is a form abstracted by intelligence which seeks what is most intelligible in you, what is most significant, determining. In fact, I have never met “human being”, only such and such concrete human; I thus abstract this form “human being” from a multitude of singular people I have crossed. It is very difficult to describe “human being”... I could describe you if I met you, and even take a picture of you, but “human being” is not as easy to describe as one would think! Yet Everyman understands what I signify by “human being”.

If I look at you in the order of life, after having come across a multitude of living beings, I will say what firstly determines you is your soul. Thus the soul is the form of the living.

Etc.

But contrary to what you write, intelligence does not solely know through forms, it also knows via the sensibles, for it never ceases to cooperate with the five senses, to an extent that we would know nothing of reality without them. Further, the abstract wouldn't exist, since the abstract proceeds form the concrete... it is One from the Multiple. In short, there are two ways intelligence can acquire knowledge: the abstract mode and the concrete mode... there are no others!

Now then, in the order of what exists, thus of the concrete, you are what comes first, and realist philosophers call that the first substance, in other words the subject, you, Veritas, whereas “human being” is first in the order of intelligibility, and we call that second substance or “quiddity”.

We thus have a first substance, Veritas, and a second substance: “human being”.

The substance which you are thinking of, which we can call substance-principle, is neither the first substance nor the second substance. It is what explains that Veritas is first in his order, and that “human being” is first in its order. In other words the substance-principle which you are seeking is what explains that the concrete is concrete and the abstract is abstract, that first substance is first substance and that second substance is second substance, thus it is neither one nor the other, neither concrete nor abstract... It is in fact because it has something to do with first substance and second substance that it is neither one nor the other... for if it were abstract, the concrete wouldn't exist, and vice versa. It is thus necessary, with regards to these two correlatives – the concrete and the abstract – that there be a reality that is present in both but at the same time beyond both.

Thus when you write: “can we not deduct that substance is irreducibly inaccessible to it?”...

...you are right in the sense that one can not concretely touch nor abstract substance-principle according to the form of what is! For substance-principle is neither concrete, else we could touch it, nor abstract, else it would only exist in our intelligence. So how can we be certain it is a reality since we can only know in a concrete or abstract mode? We must induce it... it is only through induction that one can find substance, principle according to the form of what is, for if substance-principle is neither concrete nor abstract, it nevertheless exists; in fact, it is!

You are thus right in expressing a doubt concerning the abstract mode of knowledge, since intelligence must simultaneously renounce the concrete and the abstract. You can neither take a picture of substance-principle, nor abstract it, nor describe it, nor figure it, not even imagine it... and that is precisely why many deny it exists, for no one has ever made a full circle around substance-principle, to the extent that if anyone tells you one day “that's it, I have seen precisely what substance-principle is”, you can rest assured that either that person is joking or he is clueless. In fact, it would be just as silly as another who would profess “that's it, I love my wife, I have gone full circle around her, I don't need to see her anymore”, for we never go full circle around a person, something always escapes us, which possibly proceeds from the substance of that person!

One must thus think about what an induction is. For the moderns an induction is often Baconian – i.e. quantitative – whereas for Aristotle an induction is qualitative... Now then, substance-principle is a reality in the order of being, thus is qualitative, not at all quantitative! The induction of substance-principle is quite poor! It hardly has the brilliance of a mathematical demonstration... which may explain why this necessary meagerness of intelligence to induce substance-principle, in other words this aspect of us which begs for what is at the heart of reality, does not go down well with a self-important spirit. Metaphysics is for the poor.

The gift

2009-05-30T09:48:00.000-07:00

There is a link between naivete and the present, that is to say between intelligence and eternity - and not between inaneness and the undetermined.

Intelligence is naive attention, and even tension, mark my word. It is the string of the bow in tension, the soul as a hunting dog still in its tracks, the sail of a schooner. One must be naive to navigate with a sail, naive not to get oneself an internal combustion engine.

At the beginning the wind was and it blows where and when it wants, no one knows where it orginates nor its destination. So you see, only intelligence limits inaneness, exactly as the infinite limits the unlimited, or as only solitude limits isolation. The present is where one enters into eternity. The present is the gift.

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Ideological tyrannies

2009-05-26T05:20:00.000-07:00

Aristotle was quite careful in not mistaking his way of knowing with what he knew; this is why he used the approach of analogy with art (art is closer to our psychological conditioning). Many have not understood this, thinking he was projecting his artistic analysis on other realities.

I am under the impression that the modern mistake (but it must be there since the beginning of humankind), the most universal and the most pernicious, is to mistake the conditionning of intelligence - in other words our way of knowing - with what determines intelligence - being - then do deny being exists outside of becoming, or outside of what is measurable, which comes down to a materialization of being: only what is concrete or abstract exists. Imo, there is certainly a link there with the self-importance of an intelligence which only considers that over which it can dominate, in other words either the concrete or the abstract. Yet being is neither concrete nor abstract, it is, and intelligence only starts to lift off when it accepts to let itself be measured by this fundamental evidence. We can dominate over everything, not over being.

Thus the two major modern ideological tyrannies are on the one hand a materialization of everything (only the concrete, what I can measure and weigh, exists) and on the other hand immanence of thought (only the abstract, what I conceive of, exists). We can be subjugated by one of these tyrannies or by both of them at the same time, even though being is what falls first in intelligence (like the other person, is what falls first in the order of friendship/love), but also what reveals its profoundness. Consequently, it is metaphysics/first philosophy which makes us intelligent, or more precisely which ploughs intelligence.

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Mundane babble

2009-05-24T04:56:00.000-07:00

Scribitur ad narrandum, non ad probandum.

This is yet again a dialectic... lol

I'm dead serious, a dialectic consists in opposing two things which are not of the same order.

On the one hand I can write and relate without proving anything, and on the other hand I can write and prove whilst relating.

So, granted, I know one can also write without relating nor proving anything, but in that case, you head straight out the door, you take the first left beyond the traffic light, and you can't miss it, under the lime tree, the tables outside, yes, the people who speak loudly, it's written in plain letters at the top of the entrance: "Mundane Babble". Hum, no, don't tell them I sent you, you would not get a welcome drink! lol

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Global civilization of zombies

2009-05-20T16:02:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, I regularly accompanied a friend to the hospital, who had to undergo a bone puncture every three or four months. As this took place in the capital city, there was no anaesthesia so as to free a room as quickly as possible. I found the session absolutely unbearable, even for the simple spectator I was. The operation consisted in extracting a bit of bone with a syringe mounted with a very large needle at the end of which was something resembling a small sugar pincer.

Make a long story short, I sought to know if there existed a powerful antalgic with immediate effect. Nothing. So I asked a doctor friend to prescribe ampoules of valium with the idea of administering an entire ampoule to my friend before her next session. My doctor buddy said: “All right, I will prescribe this to you, but valium is not at all an antalgic, it won’t do much for your friend”. “No matter, I’ll try it nevertheless.”

After the next session of prehistoric medicine, whilst I was driving my friend back to her place, who was completely out of it, I asked if the valium had relieved her somewhat. She mumbled “it’s curious, I felt the pain as usual, but it’s as if I didn’t care. I was thinking to myself, “Hey? It hurts a lot! I don’t care…” It seems that some have a similar biological capacity to secrete a natural valium of sorts which enables them to observe in the same way not so much pain as emotion: “Hey, I am roused! I don’t care…” Thus, emotion is considered for itself, as if it were on the side, isolated, and it gives fruit to nothing nor does it entail an action.

Extrapolating on the principle, I realized that those people are spectators of reality, and thus spectators of themselves! For example, in light of a distressing scene, not a problem, they like the emotion it procures them before anything else. They look at themselves as experiencing an emotion and they please themselves in this manner. You think I am exaggerating? I fear not. There is for that matter quite a bit to see here, the word aesthetics having the same root as eisthésis: sensation. Thus emotion is a sensation, and its provenance matters little since we can live it separately, for itself, without consequences. I assure you, there is a lot there that enables to better view the global civilization of zombies which is putting itself in place. As a matter of fact, that is how one sets shackles to a soul, by making it limp and by causing it to collapse unto itself. Moreover, this can be achieved quite easily, whilst announcing the best of intentions: who would reproach anyone of giving emotion to the largest number? Hmmmm? No one.

In the near future, I “prophesize” the birth of supermarkets of emotions. On sale: massacre of infancy as if you were there. In the mystery department, treat yourself to a Tibetan genocide. Promotion on the ground floor: the last Don Quixote’s of humanity having had faith in man… Christmas week: 50% off sundry obscenities, barbarities and massacres.

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Imagination II

2009-05-10T05:22:00.000-07:00

I was saying that imagination is intermediary between the sensible realities and intelligence, i.e. between our experience of reality and our spirit. Yet we take our imagination for experience, even though a purely "imaginary being" has no experience of anything more than himself. For imagination is grounded in reality, that's for sure, but viewed on its own it comes from itself, whereas experience embraces reality in a direct manner, i.e. something that is not us. Imagination is therefore always idealizing. It enables us to take some short trips for free, sometimes lovely ones, other times not as much. Imagination thus never comes first, it is always second, and above all it has no end, it is an errant cause, even autistic, for it may have no other purpose than itself and separates itself at the same time from reality and intelligence. Someone who is completely taken by his imagination does not have a clear direction of where he is headed, especially if for that person, more or less consciously what's more, imagination has become his whole life, that is to say has taken over.

One must acknowledge that we all more or less have a proclivity to be like this, and if we had a thermometer to take our imaginative temperature, an imaginativometer, we would imo be rather surprised at the result. Ultimately, our imagination wrestles constantly with experience, and this is quite understandable since it enables the first step back... face to face with reality.

Incidentally, people who are engulfed by imagination cannot love, simply put because the other person is a reality, not a character of a virtual short story or of a cartoon. Imaginary friendship is quite meagre!

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Imagination

2009-05-06T13:55:00.000-07:00

Someone recently pointed out to me that intelligence is intimately mixed with imagination. This assertion bothered me and I pondered over it for a few days.

Imagination is not mixed with intelligence, it is "metaxu", that is to say intermediary (in Greek metaxu means "in between"). Imagination is intermediary between intelligence and the senses. When we perceive something of reality, through one of our 5 senses (and we know nothing without them, nor can we imagine anything), imagination depicts sensations before handing them over to intelligence. Then memory stocks these images, and imagination can work and "play" with what it has at hand, but it must firstly constitute a stock from our sensations.

Thus, imagination is linked to intelligence, all right, but in a very precise manner, not indistinctively mixed with it, but as an intermediary between the sensible reality and with it, at least normally and most of the time, because some live with their imagination cut off from reality almost all of their waking hours, and, one might say, from their intelligence.

So this interested me, because after having rethought about what precedes, I realized more distinctly that imagination is neither good nor bad. It does not and it cannot distinguish between what is good and what is bad. It is amoral. Why? Quite simply because goodness and malignity are not imaginary... they are real! Yet with imagination we find ourselves in a place which is truly... imaginary.

This begets a question: what is psyche? Well it is simply imagination... a place which I create myself, situated beyond good and bad in as much as it is precisely imaginary. Consequently, here is a simple demonstration that psychologists can do nothing else but describe and in no way can see the end, that is to say what is good and what is bad. They can only describe what is pleasant and what is not, which is not at all the same!

That's all for now folks, but there are many things to see from this viewpoint. I am even under the impression that this is a very good angle of approach to see almost anything that is worth seeing. :-)

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What I wanted to say

2009-05-04T09:21:00.000-07:00

To a certain extent, faithfulness is to love what metaphysics is to intelligence, yes, that's what I wanted to say. I saw this in a very distinct manner, a few years back, and that's it. Yet I had never quite said it like that before, although one could very well say it like that. Lol

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Conviction vs intolerance

2009-04-30T13:19:00.000-07:00

Is a conviction, whatever it may be, or even a philosophical thought, or an experience, or their opposites (a non conviction, a non philosophical thought, a non experience) like a synonym of intolerance?

The answer is simple, it is no, and here is the proof : one can have a conviction of tolerance!

It is thus not the conviction which produces intolerance, but the object of a conviction. This demonstration looks quite straightforward, but I only thought it through recently, after being asked a specific question.

I will add something else, which I discover progressively, and more and more. It is, I think, when we don't have a conviction that we are the most susceptible of being violent. Why? Quite simply because if you are convinced of something (or convinced of not being convinced), it is because you have experienced it, either internally or through your senses, and therefore it is not the opinion of your neighbour that can diminish in any way your experience or your non experience. Therefore, and this is the by-product of the aforementionned, many mistake intolerance (or excessive behavior) and conviction. This explains why so many are violently against or in favor of something, for it plays the role of a conviction, since they affirm and are undoubting. Yet, quite curiously, doubt is in a certain sense the only reliable proof of a conviction. This is quite tricky! lol

Now the question takes on a quite paradoxical allure, and it is its genuine allure, for it is those without a conviction who are the most often intolerant, affirming violently to convince themselves of something, whilst at the same time the ones who are truly convinced do not cease to doubt!

So how do you extirpate yourself from there? For once again we have scraped the surface and we find ourselves mired in a good old dialectic. I only know one way to pass the obstacle: the difference lies in if one seeks the truth or not. And there, now that we have gone beyond the dialectic, we can clearly distinguish the two ways of doubting: the blockheads are wary of truth, whereas the others are prudent with relation to what is false. LoL!

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Bending it like Beckham

2009-04-28T10:56:00.000-07:00

Uncertainty is an experience of the future, certainty a prophecy of the past. In both cases one is not on the ball. What is left if you can be neither certain nor uncertain? Well, precisely, that's where you put your foot on the ball, but you'll have to get up rather early if you hope to bend it like Beckham. :-)

Credit image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sachab/

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Relation

2009-04-26T16:45:00.001-07:00

The more I look at it, the more I realize that intuition, thus a good part of the artistic approach (and the mathematical approach) consists in finding and imagining relations between things.

For example, in mathematics, you take your house and you say the length at floor level is so many yards; what does this mean in the absolute? It only means there is a yardstick somewhere, in this case the yard, and that we have created a link between this decreed measure and the length in question containing X times the yardstick. Thus essentially a decreed relation between a human invention and reality.

Other examples of relation, this time in terms of proportions. The well known golden number is a measure that architects used, as well as painters and musicians. Gothic relative to Roman, quickly said, is the passage between a proportion of one to one, and a proportion of one to two or three or four. In painting, someone like Modigliani multiplied vertical proportions by two.

Better still, in music, consider a prelude of Bach, prelude n°1 for example of the Das wohltemperirte Clavier, in do major. Consider the first note, Do, as axis and base tonic, and multiply each interval by two. The prelude sounds as if it was written by Debussy. By multiplying by two any interval between this base Do and the other notes, we have obviously eliminated all half-tones, and it sounds "gamut by tone", yet the harmony remains, and continues to ring, for we have merely multiplied by two the harmonic rapport with the tonic. For that matter, if we multiply the same intervals by 5 or 7 (modulo 12), the prelude sounds like Berg and Webern.

Imo, mathematics is essentially about the establishment of relations, in as much as it is radically a non metaphysical viewpoint. From the metaphysical standpoint, relation, one of the 10 categories of substance, is considered as "flimsy" by Aristotle. He is right! From a metaphysical viewpoint he is right, for from the point of view of being, relation is last in line! In that sense, to consider mathematics to be a first principle (i.e. to substitute it to being) is even more "flimsy"! Yet that is what the average (and advanced) modern day person does, since, before anything else, nowadays everything is becoming and relations.

Credit drawing: Frits@HikingArtist.com

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Roots are for salad plants

2009-04-23T18:06:00.000-07:00

When all is said and done, the most difficult thing in metaphysics is to grasp substance. After all maybe it's not a bad idea to grasp it indirectly first, through individuation, or even through relation, in short to understand its necessity before examining it per se. It's curious, sometimes we see things better for what they support, rather than directly for themselves.

Thus, with individuation, matter is introduced into being. The individual is the place where conditioning and being meet, and the individual becomes through this process a unique happening. It is rather satisfying for the ego to know oneself different from the others and irreplaceable. But where does this originality come from? For the soul founds originality, but does not make it more explicit. Since my feet are touching ground, as I speak, I can only notice that it is firstly matter which specifies my concrete originality, my "difference" as is commonly overheard. Personally, I find this not so amusing. Each of us has intelligence and will, so these cannot explain my otherness. I can only recognize that what first determines my originality is matter. Not only does this roll out the red carpet for materialism, but moreover it is rather humiliating. Only the blockheads don't feel humiliated, and in parenthesis, one can grasp here the small link between intelligence and humility, hi hi. Even more interesting, if I seek originality first and foremost, I leave finality to the wayside: this originality pertains to matter and quantity, to physiognomy also, but firstly to matter and quantity. Now matter has no finality - it is undetermined.

Consequently, if one no longer seeks finality, only the roots remain: archaeology, genealogy, the ancestors etc. We turn ourselves towards the past, we are scared of the future and of death, because the term of our future is death, this inevitable gap in the clouds; we look at the foundation, we stay seated on our rear end. The world is tired, so it sits on its foundation, on the ground, on matter and on quantity. It is the death of the spirit and of the person, and we thus fall back on the individual. Even though I am fundamentally different by my spirit, even if I don't know it yet, it is the body and conditioning which have taken front stage. We are thus under the ferula of psychology, origins and atavism. We are spellbound by our conditioning, and there is no more love, for finality is love, obviously. We hence replace this by the pleasures of the body under all forms, what exalts the individual by his individual originality. How many actors do you hear, sports stars, and sundry VIPs who speak of their roots, their inner circle, their look, their power, their efficiency, their pleasure? All conditionings put down roots in matter, thus in the body, to the point that when tiredness, hunger, sickness, poverty come into play, conditioning takes front stage and substitutes itself to spirit, thus to finality.

It is around the 14th century that conditioning took the seat of substance, notably with William of Ockham, and the diversion having the advantage of originality, it obviously seduced the largest crowd. In parallel to this, instead of distinguishing things, we separated them - that is what the contemporary dialectics are - and we put what we separated in opposition and in rivalry. The final cause (finality) then became metaphoric, symbolic and poetic, which maimed it, let's be honest. Thus the exemplary cause is put to the fore, i.e. thought is put in front of reality, to the point where it masks it and even mutilates it, for that is well and truly what ideologies amount to: to cut out from reality what does not enter in the idea we make of it.

Credit image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/clayirving/

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How vs why?

2009-04-21T06:47:00.000-07:00

The scientist seeks the HOW whereas the (realist) philosopher seeks the WHY. Never will the scientist find the whys, only the hows of the whys. One discovery leads to another discovery, which leads to other discoveries, and again to more discoveries. Nothing to write home about because matter is fundamentally undetermined (from the point of view of finality) and says nothing about quality. Quality is simply beyond its' reach. Science studies matter and quantity, enlarging only what it knows, thus quantity, never quality, and the end focusses on quality. One can only measure the effects of quality.

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A critical juncture

2009-04-13T19:02:00.000-07:00

Credit image: gadl @flickr.com

Thanks to all who participated in the blogpoll "what comes first white or whiteness?" I trust those who said white didn't say so because it appeared before whiteness in the poll ;D Actually, both answers are correct depending on the order under consideration (existence or intelligibility). In the last analysis though, the question to be answered is what comes first, existence or signification? No prizes, but a good brushing for the neuron. Please read on... :-)

The dictionary states that whiteness is the quality of being white, and sees in it a principle (what comes first) of sorts. Yet it is when we see a white wall, snow, milk, a white cat, that intelligence abstracts the noun whiteness. Yet once you abstract the "universal" whiteness it seems that you see the singular whites differently, under the light of whiteness. If you had never seen white you wouldn't ask yourself what whiteness is, and if you did not understand what whiteness is you wouldn`t recognize white so easily. But you have never seen whiteness on your daily walk. White is what you experience in the first instance, before whiteness appears in the intellect. White depends on a thing (eg wall) for its existence, but it must be isolated from the wall to extract it's meaning, through the question, "what is whiteness"? Consequently, white comes first in the order of existence, but whiteness comes first in the order of intelligibility. The crucial question is therefore what comes first, what exists or it's signification? This is where Descartes turns his back to Aristotle, for whom the first question is "does this exist?" and the second is "what is this?". For Descartes like Plato, ideas are innate...

If you understand that whiteness is the fruit of your different experiences of white, the signification of whiteness and white are one and the same, on an abstract basis for the first and a concrete basis for the second. In parenthesis, the reason why placing the idea before the concrete reality is so tempting is because the abstract mode is pure (whiteness) whereas the concrete mode is impure (a white wall).

With regards to being, the transition from "this is" (judgement of existence) to "what is being?" is analogous to the transition from "this wall is white" to "what is whiteness?". In both cases, we move from the visible to the invisible. This adjustment seems almost innocuous, quite the contrary: either metaphysics connects with the radical structure of intelligence, or intelligence haughtily turns its back to it!

White and whiteness (2)

2009-04-13T11:57:00.000-07:00

Credit image: pareeerica www.flickr.com (CC)

Thank you for this interesting little story. Very instructive! What is cute, in those cases, is that it is through negation that one purports to demonstrate: “I will demonstrate to you that this ceiling is not white”. Why does not one demonstrate that this ceiling is such or such a color?? For me, this is one of the most significant manias of contemporary Western thought: to start with negation.

Further, there is a confusion between “white” and “whiteness”, i.e. between the real being and the universal (or being of reason). In this case, being of reason is taken as measure of reality, and even substitutes itself to it. “Whiteness” (which is called “white” in your story) does not exist as a color of itself, but only as an abstraction proceeding from one's intelligence. It is one from the multiple, in a triple relation, either "unum ex-multis", "unum ad-multa" or "unum in-multis". It is interesting to seek the three nuances, because the person you spoke to lined up three mistakes in his development. Mistakes which correspond rigorously to the negation of these three nuances of the universal. The first is that he denies that the abstraction of the one proceeds from the multitude of singulars (ex); then he refuses to see that this one is ordered to the diversity from which it proceeds (ad); finally, he concludes with a denial that this one (the white) can, as a being of reason, identify itself to such or such a singular from which it proceeds.

In other words, he starts with a being of reason as if he took it out of a hat (he should have been stopped in his tracks with the question: what is "white"?). Then he intentionally separates this white that he has nonetheless abstracted. Finally, he denies that the singular is identifiable to the abstraction, which he brandishes as unique measure and absolutely separated from any reality other than his intelligence. It is thus gobbledygook.

As a side note, this problem of the One and the Multiple crops up everywhere these days. It is a favorite of contemporary thought, which in the last analysis replaces Being by One, and even places Being in dependence to One. At the end of the day, this leads to substituting logic to metaphysics, which is quite seducing and even ecumenical, since only logic reconciles the one and the multiple! Whereas metaphysics distinguishes them, and shows that one is a property of being, in other words that Being is first.

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On white and whiteness

2009-04-11T18:21:00.000-07:00

Next post will be the response to this OP.

Madame Y,

Over lunch someone asked me, what is to believe?
I did not know what to answer.
He said: "I can prove to you that ceiling there is not white".
In truth, the ceiling was white.
His proof, the table cloth is even whiter.
This was also true.
I could have said: "Yes that's true, but both are white, and one is more white."
He would have said: "No that's untrue, there is only one color which can be qualified as white."

I was not too tempted to enter into this discussion given his personality.

What is reality? The perception of white?

Playing the partition

2009-04-08T16:44:00.000-07:00

Credit drawing: Leander Lenz (www.behance.net)

I oft hear the objection towards a true philosophical approach, that it suffices to love and that there is no need to understand, nor even to try to understand. There is seemingly some truth to this assertion, so much as we sometimes manage to make intelligence the rival of will, thus of the heart. Since it is not I who invented myself, in other words I have not chosen to be made to love, and on the other hand to be "stupid" does not preclude anyone from loving, well all there is left for me to do is to love, and that's all folks, like a plant or an animal! We do tend to take animals as a reference these days: do THEY get wound up over things!?

All right, I agree, we are in the last analysis interpreters of our nature, and it seems it is not necessary to try to understand, all we need to do is to play the partition, easy peasy. Well that's not the case precisely, I know high level interpreters, some of them international in scope, and they play what is written on the sheet, with emotion, panache, brio, even with their guts, as the saying goes... yet if we stop them in the middle of their performance, or if they are bothered by any given incident, they have to start anew because they have no idea what a modulation is. I promise that some interpreters and instrumentalists play what is written on the sheet, even if a fly has just landed on it, and understand diddly-squat of the intelligence of the composition. For them it boils down to a movement of fingers, a physical training, and that's precisely what the expression “learned dog” means.

Well I say that an interpreter who seeks to understand the thought of the composer, and the harmonic, rhythmic and melodic intelligence of what he is playing is concretely better than a musician who moves his fingers without having a clue of what's going on. And let's not even speak of those who embark on a piece which is clearly unplayable because it is not written by a real composer or because it doesn't correspond to the tessitura of their instrument, and who run backstage sobbing because they have received a swarm of tomatoes, and there are a stack like that... Or who trumpet they will cross the Atlantic in a bathtub, everything is fine, the sea is calm this morning, you can go see for yourself if you don't believe me, and who plan to stick their finger in the tap hole to stay afloat, and in general finish off with a “In any case, such and such famous sailor drowned at the end of his career, which proves if need be that one must not ponder too hard over these things.”

What can you respond to that!? All that you can do is wait and hope that, in case there is a problem, they will come back swimming, albeit blue all over, but at least that they will come back, because sometimes they don't come back, or without the children... and if they do come back, then you have to patiently wait that they cease to be stunned by the fact that you are not solely and completely surprised by their wreckage! I'm not saying that to ponder over these things will preclude any incident, and maybe not even a wreckage, but it can be of some assistance. :-)

The Categories

2009-04-06T15:31:00.000-07:00

*clears throat*, "Harvey" (translator) here. Just thought I'd do a quick post on Aristotle's ten categories.

In the Categories (a section of his works on Logic - Aristotle is the father of Logic), Aristotle lays out ten categories (or predicaments) of being which are a metaphysical identity card of sorts of man. They are secondary attributes of the subject or first substance (eg Count Sneaky).

1) Second substance: the intelligibility or quiddity of Count Sneaky (man)
2) quality: Count Sneaky has visible qualities (brown hair, brown eyes) and invisible qualities (intelligence, artistic sense, virtues...)
3) quantity: Count sneaky is x feet tall
4) relation: CS is as tall or taller than "Harvey"
5) action: CS is reading
6) passion: CS is happy
7) time: any physical movement implies time and place
8) place: CS is in Twitterville (or somewhere else)
9) position: CS is sitting
10) state: CS is holding the phone

From another realistic thinker (GD): "the ten categories will always remain imo one of the signs of Aristotle's superior intelligence.

It is probable that this list proceeds from the sole and pure intuition of the Philospher, after having meditated on the being of things. It is the fruit of an absolute vision of intelligence, no doubt at the term of a long inductive observation of beings and things, where each time (10 times) a trigger mechanism was produced in his intuitive intelligence, distinct from and prior to reason. In this manner, it can be said the "Categories" are the doorway to reasoning."

The categories have a quiddity, ie their own "form" and intelligibility. They express the modalities of being but are relative to substance (what unites first substance - CS - and second subtance - man.)

My substance is my soul but substance is not soul, else all that would be would live. :-)

Dear readers, do not ponder over this too long and hard, else you will get a headache, but as we will be speaking of substance (the source of all determinations) and categories, I thought it useful to lay this out. ;-)

A formidable weapon

2009-04-03T13:41:00.000-07:00

When a character is deliberately blown from reality into an imaginary state, be it through writing, theatre, a comical sketch or satire, which is the work of any writer or any stand up comedian, there is certainly a degree of cruelty involved, since one must carve away in there like one moulds play dough. It is quite an efficient manner of not loving to hold the other for a transformable object, for a "modelizeable" working matter. The potter uses clay to make a vase, so too does the writer, in the form of characters.

So when you listen to a stand up comedian how do you know there is not a real person behind his character who is rageing or sulking, because he/she knows there is such and such an allusion made to a real life story. This phenomenon is far from being novel.

In painting for example, many an artist has amused himself in giving to his characters traits of existing people by portraying them on a canvass in a grotesque fashion, or at the least disadvantageously. With the representation of the Apocalypse, for example, you will be told that such and such a character at the bottom left corner, where hell is portrayed with souls burning in a marmite, is the grocer of the author to whom he owed money, or this one, his own wife, etc. Nowadays no one gives a hoot, but back then, the grocer and the wife must not have been overjoyed, especially if an observer detailing the canvass came to say: look at that woman rotting in hell, what a nasty face she has! That is well deserved!

The painter is oblivious. He just paints in various colours the obscenities he observes around him. He brings them to the limelight. He couldn't care less about the rest.

With writing it is the same. Someone like Marc-Edouard Nabe, the son of the saxophonist Zanini, wrote a "Personal Diary" in 5 or 6 volumes of 800 pages each. He goes very far since he prints family names and demolishes or hails right and left. Many people in the music or literary world were concerned. He even describes in detail how his wife Helene "treats" him, how she cheats on him, how he shoos her away or on the contrary how he loves her. Everything is there, to the nearest toenail. He also derides hundreds of people whom he only intersected with for a few hours. He must not have made himself many friends. He doesn't care. It's not his problem. For that matter he wrote this sentence on each of the books in this diary: "The more the details of my life are known, the more I will be free".

He isn't wrong. But, pray tell, free of what? Well free of loving or of not loving in a few sentences or not, and this for the simple reason that to make a secret public is to execute love, it never fails: there is no love without secrets, and to expose the secret, or the so called secret, is to liquidate the love or friendship that goes with it, or said to be. One must recognize that this is an efficient recourse and a rather formidable weapon to have at hand which the artist can weild at any moment to the detriment of those who annoy him, and in a profitable manner since he monetizes the satire to the delight of the reader who has paid his entrance ticket, as Louis-Ferdinand Céline would say.

How can you love your body?

2009-03-28T16:06:00.000-07:00

I was leisurely captivated by a starless night when, in delicately turning a cloud, my elbow weighed on a remote control which gave the floor very loudly to a television with which I still share my dining room. I jumped out at this creature of Sony to muzzle it, but an indignation lacerated the cool silence, shrieked by the image of a woman looming out of what I thought I saw was a discussion on breast enlargement: "How can you love your body if you don't feel loved!"

The silence rapidly regained control but I could not escape from overtime as this resonating byword continued to bellow in my head: How can you love your body if you don't feel loved! There was no way out, I had to resign myself to the ordeal of sudden death: How can you love your body if you don't feel loved!

I thus confronted the intruder, and I do not regret it, for I had never approached such a digest of fundamentals! Ah, I think I've found a pearl! I will have a jeweller examine it in the coming days, but it is already clear that I have struck a bargain. What we have here is undoubtedly a masterpiece of contemporary art: How can you love your body if you don't feel loved!?

First there is this splendid "how". The artist has not skimped with an unfit why, he exclusively used noble materials, giving immediately the means to the largest number to lounge in a sumptuous: How would you like your steak honey, rare, medium or well done? Which obviously waters the mouth of the aesthetic butchery.

Then comes the expression "can you" which is the signature stamp of modern times. Only the nitwit wants, these days each and everyone can! This is very important because the how and the can do away once and for all with the why and the want. These days we can more and more, and it is increasingly less worth it to want.

Then we penetrate into the thick of things: we postulate that we love our body more than anything ("How can you love your body!") and it is after this paroxysmal pause that the reclamation at last manifests itself ("if you don't feel loved!").

- Do you feel how I love you?
- Um... no!
- And there for example, do you feel it better?
- No, I don't feel a thing!!!
- Ok and there?
- The cheek!!!
- Well what then, do you want to feel like I love you or do you not? Smile

I'm sorry but I don't understand why the verb to feel is not in the first part of the sentence: How can you love your body if you don't feel loved! There's no reason why everybody can't feel everything right from the start, why wait? But it may also just be a question of information and communication, well of organisation and synergy of skills: How can you love your body if you are not informed you are loved! That's it basically, synergy of skills and transfer of information between the one who loves and the one who is loved, we can't do everything at once, to love and to be loved, and we aren't either necessarily informed of everything at each moment!

Pfff, no, that's not it either, it's not so simple, for how will we feel we are informed that we can feel we are loved??? Ah yes, that's a responsible policy which gives concrete answers and not ideal and platonic forms, because we say things, but in practice nobody holds their promises!

Honestly if I were a TV show host to the question "How can you love your body if you don't feel loved?" I would have answered: "I prefer not to say anything nonsensical, and the answer is no."

So I know you well enough, you will tell me that there was no question and that the lady thundered an indignation, not at all an interrogation, but you know why I would still answer this? Can you imagine a nice looking and intelligent young girl venting such a stupidity: "How can you love your body if you don't feel loved? Don't you see the ball b... running towards you from 100 yards out "And what do I do to feel someone loves me if I am ugly and stupid? I'm not even asking to be loved, but at least that somebody makes me believe it, so I can feel what it does to those who are loved for real!

Yes, ok, you've already mentioned this, I am not deaf. There was no question, I nonetheless answered and it may very well be that I spoiled something. Well, ok, I admit it then, I spoiled something, but me, with experience, there are things I prefer to spoil, ya never know.

Radical nostalgias

2009-03-25T13:24:00.000-07:00

credit: J. PEREA J. BARRAGÁN http://www.conelarte.com/

It would no doubt be sappier to proceed with an analysis of our radical nostalgias rather than a psychoanalysis of the foundations and the bogs.

We would most certainly come across the large beams of the architecture of the soul. I am quite certain that we would extract from it a nostalgia of the artistic perfection, a nostalgia of liberty, of eternity, of love etc., and also a nostalgia of truth... that one is not so common these days, but we would nonetheless find it, at least if we looked long and hard enough... lol

Zen attitude

2009-03-19T15:02:00.000-07:00

Buddhist apathy does not consist in a desire unsatisfied, or a want, but well and truly in the absence of desire, which stifles the want, thus suffering or pain, at the root, as one no longer desires. One must desire to suffer, one must be in want of a good, even on the physical level, for bodily pain is the absence of health, thus a physical want which, if not satisfied, produces suffering.

The same holds affectively, and if for example I grieve over the death of my friend, it is obvious that if I manage to forget him, I will not suffer! For that matter this is why sleep, ultimately, be it physical or mental, enables not to suffer, since our desire and suffering are also put to sleep. Doctors today know how to relieve 95% of physical sufferings; for the remaining 5%, they put the patient to sleep, at which time any signs of suffering on the patients face vanishes. Thus suffering implies conscience, and more particularly the conscience of the unsatisfied desire and of the want. Behind this unsatisfied desire is hope, or despair if we persuade ourselves that the good we hope for is not attainable. This is what despair is: the certainty that a good has utterly escaped us.

Buddha was a prince, rich, capable of having more or less anything he wanted, women, horses, music etc., and he realized that he always desired something more, indefinitely, that he was never satisfied, never in rest, never serene, he saw that his soul was always in a state of agitation, thus in a state of suffering. He thus set off to meditate in the mountain to understand and experiment how not to suffer, and one of the things he understood is that suffering proceeds from desire, and therefore if one no longer desires one no longer suffers. Buddha was quite preoccupied, I believe, by the question of suffering. He saw that by anesthetizing passions, suffering was also anesthetized, for suffering is a passion!

One must distinguish and highlight the difference between not loving and not being (sufficiently) united to ones good whilst desiring to love and be united with ones good (typically suffering), and not loving because we desire nothing, and it is this last state which is Buddhist apathy. Yet passions are not good or bad of themselves, it all depends what the aim is. Thus, anger can be just, where not being angry would be a raging fault, or the sign of an incapacity or debility of the heart and reason! I say this because nowadays we oft hear that one must remain "zen" in all circumstances, and that anger is the sign of a person who doesn't control himself. Yet when one becomes angry, in particular, this shows where one is wounded, thus where one "loves". I am obviously not speaking of an infantile burst of anger, but of a just anger. And yet we are oft told that one must not demonstrate anger. Thus we are told not to be affected by anything, in other words we are told not to love... keep cool, do not love! Lol

Passions are neither virtues nor vices, they proceed from our capacity to suffer. I don't know if one can say this, but it seems to me right at this moment, in some sense, that passion is almost the opposite of virtue, for virtue does not in the least consist in suffering, and I think that many have moralized passions.

There is another thing that is very important, imo, that must be closely scrutinized, and that is what bad/evil is, which thus produces suffering, whichever angle we look at it, physical, affective, intellectual, spiritual. It is a big bone, upon which many a neuron has stumbled, sometimes without surmounting the obstacle, other times only doing so after ten or so years. Bad/evil is obviously linked to suffering, and depending on how we answer the question "what is evil", the consequences are immense downstream. The zen tendency, in fashion, likes to infer that evil does not exist, or that it is equal to good, in brief fashion is misguided. Nietzsche would say, "beyond good and evil", which is rather a Buddhist attitude for that matter, necessarily, for if good has something to do with love, evil has to do with suffering, the two having to do with desire, be it satisfied or not, but with desire. Thus if I no longer desire, I do away with good or evil. The philosophical question of "what is evil" is the real foundation of ethics, there can be no other, the rest is for suckers. But one must treat this question radically, as far upstream as possible, well before morality which is one of the consequences of the answer we arrive at or not.

The Rector

2009-03-07T00:19:00.000-08:00

Credit image: http://cloeti.canalblog.com

Once upon a time, my mother warned me we would have guests for supper, and that I would exceptionally have the permission to partake in the meal. She felt it necessary to add that I best be polite because the Rector was included in the lot. Rather stupidly I admit, I made an etymological association between rector and rectum, and I concluded he must necessarily be an arse. I didn't say anything to my mother so as not to grieve her, as I thought interiorly: "if we start having washouts as guests, and further if I have permission to carve up a bite with them, we are not out of the woods yet."

A stack of people showed up at around eight, and I focused on the washout in question. He didn't really look more like a washout than the rest of the guests, but I had him in my scope, and also his wife for that matter, who wasn't too unpleasant looking after all, let's be honest with some hindsight. As I didn't have permission to engage in conversation, I kept my mouth shut at the table. Towards the end of the supper, the bloke, thinking he was doing well in breaking the adult ice, loomed towards me and asked: "And you youngster, what do you want to be when you grow up???"

My, that was unexpected!! I jumped on the occasion I was waiting for since the commencement... I was planning on being a musician, which is what I did later on, and I answered that, but with the following undertones: "I won't be a rectum, pal!". Now, I felt that the bloke did not appreciate the answer, especially the tone that I had spiced it up with, and the other guests were silently awaiting a pedagogical commentary such as "that's not a job!". Lo and behold, the rector full-fledged played into my hand: "That's not a job, young man! Where is that going to lead you... musician?". As I had anticipated his answer, I retorted: "to the cemetery, just like you, but normally and given your age, a little later than you".

What a feast! Dead silence, half of the guests who couldn't stand the rector in the outside world were tittering in their desert. Without more ado, my mother offered him another helping. At the time she always made orange salad and chocolate mousse for the guests, for sake of simplicity. She addressed him with her customary demeanour: "I would be really pleased if you would help yourself to some more, if you are tempted".

Well the bloke's face had turned a color exactly like the orange salad on the table. Even as I was licking my plate, I observed him from the corner of my eye. This is when my father stepped in: "Maybe you will say goodnight like a good boy and go to bed?" Whereupon I said: "Not so fast, I will help myself to some more chocolate mousse, as soon as the rectum has had seconds!"

Since that day, I assure you, I work my etymology!! This is something Georgina never understood! It is useless she would say, like metaphysics, just the same. Jeez.

Analogical thinking

2009-03-02T08:37:00.000-08:00

Painting: Aristotle and Alexander

The work of art is at the starting point of Aristotle's analysis. For this he has been much criticized. However, his critics often didn't understand that his approach was an analogical one.

The work of art is closer to human sensibility than nature, and thus closer to our psychological conditioning. It is therefore logical, even cunning, to start with our manner of analyzing a human craft to highlight the essential creases of intelligence, creases which constitute the manner in which we analyze and seek the proper principles of reality.

Well then in front of a work of art we interest ourselves firstly in what determines in the order of intelligibility (it's a bicycle or a computer or a table). Thus we look at form (form amswers the question: what is it?), then matter, then the author or agent (i.e. the efficient cause, or the origin), then the purpose or end (in view of what the work is made) and finally the exemplar cause (on what model it was created).

We can put these five interrogations in parallel to our five senses: what it is (sight or the formal cause), of what it is made (touch or the material cause); where it comes from (hearing or the efficient cause), in view of what it is (smell or the final cause), on which model it is (taste or the exemplar cause).

These five questions are then extended to nature and to man. One must therefore extend this interrogation of the "why" of man, following the formal cause of what is. I know reality in its descriptive form, for example "Valerie is a woman", but I want to discover in me (or someone else) what comes first. That is the true appetite of intelligence, for the principle is what is first in its order and that beyond which I cannot go.

Harmony

2009-02-25T16:45:00.000-08:00

Harmony, which is a science and an art, is a human invention in view of abstracting laws. But one must be careful, for that is precisely where lays a subtle adjustment, which looks unimportant, yet the consequences of which are far reaching downstream. The Swiss know it well, the source of the Rhone and of the Rhine are relatively close by, but downstream it's a whole other story. One must not mistake the source!

Thus the subtle adjustment, which is crucial, is this one: there is an order in nature, but neither mathematics nor harmony are principles in themselves of this order. They are the fruit of human intelligence which interrogates and seeks to understand these principles. In realist philosophy, this is called a "quiddity", in other terms the intelligibility of a reality.

Let me put forth an example, a true story, to show what a quiddity is but also the error consisting in mistaking it for the first principle. Once upon a time, a little boy was looking at a sculptor chipping away at a large piece of marble. After a few days, out of the marble rose a horse on its hind legs, magnificent, down to the smallest detail. The little boy cried out to the artist: wooooow, and since how long was the horse inside the marble? Well it is the same mistake when someone says that man has not invented mathematics, but has discovered them (just as the little boy could not imagine that the sculptor insufflates a quiddity into the marble, nor creates the horse - the horse was in the marble and the sculptor discovered it.)

This is quite a lovely farce, which has seduced many and close between. I know some who, after hearing this story would say: "well I wish to remain like this little boy". And here we enter into an illusion, that which equates infantilism to the spirit of youth.

Angst

2009-02-20T03:26:00.000-08:00

Fear, its object, its consequences, it is part of a large family: timidity, doubt, creeps, alarm, disquietude, apprehension, dread, frisson, stage fright...

What characterizes fear is its object - the unknown - whereas the rest of the family focusses on a known or imagined object. The unknown is obviously death and its by-products, and one should carry out a comparative cost/benefit analysis between the two attitudes confronted to the unknown... all the more so since the modern age person has eliminated fear by disposing of the why of fear.

Clearly, if there is no longer an object, there is no more reason to be afraid. It was thus necessary to find another name for fear, a generic name which qualifies a sentiment with an unknown object, and angst fit the bill.

We are anguished without determining the source, and we speak of an ill-being, which is left to specialists to treat the symptoms of, so as to re-establish a well-being of sorts... which has no more reason to be than the ill-being it replaces!

PS Hey! Being must be rolling on the floor and laughing its ash off to hear that it has been donned with an ill or a well... My! Here I am as an ill-being, do you recognize me luv? I assure you, it's me! lol Hey! Jeepers, you really gave me the creeps, I kid you not... you know, I wouldn't have recognized you otherwise!

Descartes errors

2009-02-14T16:13:00.000-08:00

To recap, in short, Descartes' errors:

1) Firstly, the error consisting in giving precedence to thought over the sensible and immediate experience of proper sensibles, which he declares to be subjective, and to do it at the source of his philosophy.

2) Then the other error consisting in holding the common sensibles to be objectively experimented under the pretext that these can be the object of a measure, notwithstanding a measure is a figment of our intelligence, because yards/meters or gallons/liters don't grow on trees.

3) Further the error consisting in confining intelligence to logic, which is only one of the tools of intelligence amongst others.

4) last (but not least) the error consisting in assimilating what is true to reality.

Those are four very infantile errors for a realist philosopher, four beginners' errors... I take that back, a beginner with a normal constitution wouldn't make those errors. Yet not only does Descartes make them, but he proudly displays them as his claim to fame.

Once again, "I think, therefore I am" is obviously not wrong but what is highly toxic is to prop an entire philosophy against that principle.

". . . I noticed that while I was trying . . . to think everything false, it was necessary that I, who was thinking this, was something. And observing that this truth "I am thinking, therefore I exist" was so firm and sure that all the most extravagant suppositions of the sceptics were incapable of shaking it, I decided that I could accept it without scruple as the first principle of the philosophy I was seeking. [Discourse IV, para. 1; CSM, I, p. 127.]"

Master and disciple

2009-02-08T05:47:00.000-08:00

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/master-of-jazz-michael-lee.html

Arnold Schoenberg writes in the introduction of his treatise on harmony that one must absolutely be wary of any musician who teaches, for that signifies that he has failed in his career as a musician. In truth, and for diverse reasons, any professor of music understands this remark.

In fact, no high level musician has ever left a treatise behind. When Schoenberg writes this he has fled Nazi Germany and has gone to live in the US, where his talent is not recognized. He teaches music, like Beethoven, at times, when he found himself in financial straits.

Let’s look at this more closely. Bach did not leave a treatise. He left the art of the fugue, 22 fugues written on the same theme, without a single comment. Vivaldi left nothing. Mozart didn’t fare any better. I think only Berlioz left an orchestration treatise, which between you and me is of little interest. In jazz it is the same story: Monk, Bud Powel, Armstrong, Parker, Duke Ellington, Mingus, Wes Montgomery, Bill Evans… nothing, not the slightest word! What's more… these people did not take any classes! For them, the master is the ear.

There is hence two ways to learn:

The first is to follow the theoretical classes given by a professor, with the risk that Schoenberg has pointed out.

The second is to find a “master” and to “absorb him" in silence, that is to say to imitate him to the point where one is capable of him in any situation. Then one must assimilate him, that is to say emerge oneself from what one has swallowed, lest one remain a clone of the “master”. Someone I know, let’s say his name is Marc Martin, a saxophonist, assimilated in that way all of John Coltrane, to the point where he took himself for him and where in effect, both in the notes and in the sound, he was rigorously his clone. One day he is playing with a great organist, and during the concert he accelerates at top speed into Coltrane type passages, just as if he was Coltrane. In the end, the organist turns to him and says: "Great, you play really great! But just one thing: hey Marc, where is Martin?" lol

Further to this, an encounter with a “master” underscores two other difficulties: the first is that one can only understand a master to the extent that one has already understood him, for I know people who didn’t think before they encountered a master, but ever since they have encountered one, they have stopped thinking! I would even go so far as saying that if we are really in presence of a master and a disciple, the disciple must ultimately understand the master better than the master understood himself, else it is a fiasco.

Now we see that the first difficulty is twofold: is the master really a master? Can I measure myself to him or will I remain a disciple all my life? For a disciple who has understood the master no longer quotes him – and that is certainly the sign, for truth belongs to no one in particular.

Regarding metaphysics

2009-01-31T19:13:00.000-08:00

Regarding metaphysics, it has long been engulfed, for several centuries now. It is quite the task to take up a brute metaphysical thought, for not only is it inaccessible, but it is recovered by layer upon layer of errors. It’s as if you wished to find the original wood of your shutters: you must scrape off layer upon layer of paint. It is a tough job, and even wearisome, in particular because some layers which have been deposited are quite tenacious.

For us, it is notably necessary to unstick Descartes, Kant, Hegel and the Marxist dialectics, Nietzsche and then Heiddeger….and then one must pass Plotin, the Fathers of the Church, notably Thomas Aquinus and Augustine of Hippo, and go back in such a manner to Plato, all whilst regularly receiving bits of wood in the teeth, for when one swims upstream of a river one’s face is besieged by any which sort of junk, and at the source, one progressively understands that the world is entirely neoplatonician, and then, one must ultimately decide to start afresh with Aristotle, he who radically faced off with Plato, because that’s where everything plays out…I’d even say that for the Oriental world, for India is very close to Plato, or vice versa, but between Plato and India there is a stunning proximity.

But this task is nothing more than very long, tedious and even fastidious, for the immediate difficulty is that of translations, without mentioning understanding Aristotle, which cannot be done in a day, for ethics or physics or logic is one thing, but the 14 books of metaphysics is another matter, and one must read the Zeta book of metaphysics 100 times before even just hoping to understand the problem under review. Very few consent to this, and the majority flow downstream at a rapid clip, the cadavers being those that descend the most swiftly since they do not oppose any resistance.

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The duck laid the egg!

2009-01-28T05:41:00.000-08:00

http://flickr.com/photos/lukedaduke/

It is not unusual to hear some chuckle inanely when asking the question: "what came first, the egg or the chick?", and who think, with such a demeanour, they can ridicule the intelligent theological analysis manufactured by their fellow man. So I say enough, and you God, you must not lie on this matter, even if you were caught out this time around. So if you don't mind, I will say the truth as it is.

Now then, all this is because few have read the Aztec bible, in which the first text starts as follows: "In the beginning, God created the duck", and then it explains in detail how God asked the duck to go fetch him some loam at the bottom of the pond to craft man, and to what extent the duck was very obedient at the time, that is to say before, on the advice of the meandering one, Georgina should eat the earplugs off the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Don't be silly! The duck made several trips, come now, for I don't know if you looked at how you are built, but he could not have brought up 85k of mud in his bill in only one go! To make a long story short, when God got sufficient material to start the job, he sculptured man over several days. The duck waited by docilely, but since time was moving slowly, inevitably, boredom started to yank at its wings, and it decided to play a prank on God: the duck laid the egg of the chick by pushing very hard from behind.

Needless to describe the speed at which it took off and hid further away, for it gathered that God would only be half amused when he would see what would pop out of the egg. When the chick stuck its head out with exactly the same silly air as Georgina when she puts in her earplugs, the duck laughed out loud, and it cried out to God: "Hey! Check out the peabrained chick that everyone will think you have crafted!" God didn't particularly appreciate the prank, but since his hands were covered in loam, that the duck was some ways off, and that the chick, oblivious to the situation, was walking on his loam, he whacked her a good one, to an extent never seen afterwards, even when Cain made him believe that Abel was doing well and had only gone out for a stroll. It is ever since that day that the little red crest on the head of the chick doesn't quite hold up straight. There, for those who snicker along with Georgina that I think too much: it is the Aztec duck that laid the egg of the chick to play a prank on God... and if you studied your theology instead of just reading People magazine, like Georgina, you might be no less knowledgeable than I am. Hey, I said "might", don't get all excited now!

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Descartes or idealism

2009-01-23T18:01:00.000-08:00

Picture: Descartes treading a book of Aristotle.

I learned Descartes in school. Later on it was a real punishment to reread him, in view of showing the inanity of his philosophy, in particular of his metaphysics.

In short, here is why the Cartesian school of thought is a true calamity for the modern world.

All his philosophical construct rests on his renowned “I think, therefore I am”. This assertion is not false in itself as it is evident that each of us can deduce our own existence by establishing that we think. However, what is horrifying is to lay ones thought as anterior to ones sensations. Descartes in this way is the one who laid the first rock of almost all contemporary ideologies, because, as one does not necessarily know, Marx, Freud, and many others were greatly influenced by this radical inversion in our way of knowing. In fact, if our thought takes precedence over our way of knowing, what will we know? It’s simple, we will know ourselves!

So Descartes denies or rejects the proper sensibles, and recognizes the common sensibles as the only objective ones. I will remind what the proper sensibles and the common sensibles are: the proper sensibles are the realities perceived by one of the five senses (taste, smell, sight, touch and hearing), the common sensibles are those accessible through various senses (size, shape, number, motion, rest).

One must realize the crucial role that imagination and affect play in the perception of the common sensibles! If the common sensibles take precedence, as Descartes professes, the proper sensibles go to the wayside, and reality becomes secondary… and when Descartes declares that the common sensibles are the sole objective sensibles, he sinks humanity into subjectivity, later to be coined “transcendental subjectivity”.

All the same, and notwithstanding what Descartes may have thought, who claims that only the common sensibles are objective (given that one can measure them), it is the opposite which is true: only the proper sensibles are objective because they impose themselves to our intelligence externally.

Think of this, when you have a nightmare, you are a prisoner of the common sensibles: it is the big dog that is gaining ground on you, the chains that immobilize you… And then you grab your pillow in a startle, you recognize its texture, and you come back to the real world. It is through the proper sensibles that you escape from the labyrinth of nightmarish images of your dream. Well the neocartesian ideologies are the nightmare of humanity, and one must reconnect with reality to escape from them! This is the first tight turn that ones’ intelligence must not miss, lest it race straight into a field of nightmares.

And what is an ideology ? It is precisely an idea that takes precedence over reality. In general we take something that has some truth in it, and we make an absolute out of it, in other words a total system, cutting out what of reality does not fit into our idea of reality. That is what an ideology is and what history has shown and continues to show it is, and which has on occasion led to large scale massacres.

Hence Descartes is the pillar of modern errant thought, even if William of Ockham, the theologian, alienates objectivity to subjectivity; in fact, Descartes may well have popularized Occam. Whereas Aristotle seeks what is first in knowledge, and looks at the object, in other words at being (later on Thomas Aquinus would state "primo in intellectu cadit ens", "being is the first thing to fall into ones intelligence", borrowing a formula from Avicenna). But when Occam seeks what is first in knowledge, he looks at the “Intelligo”, in other words the “I am thinking”, like Descartes with his “Cogito”. And when Occam looks at the “Intelligo”, what does he know? Himself, also! In both cases being eclipses itself before quantity and the measurable, and from then on quantity has increasingly taken front stage, naturally to the detriment of quality.

Well then it is quality which we touch objectively and immediately, which imposes itself to us, whereas quantity is something subjective, which we only have access to mediately, through measure and specifically the unit of measure, which is not quantity, but something which our intelligence produces so as to all the same have something to say about quantity. Descartes in essence has put everything upside down, and everyman is clapping!!

It is quite remarkable to observe this radical difference at the source of two philosophies, one which starts, like with Aristotle, by interrogating about the existence (or non existence) of a reality, and the other, as with Descartes, which thinks first of the nature of something before even having evaluated the reality of its existence! Further, if God exists, Descartes usurps the supreme title, because in the order of being, it is only with God that the idea can precede the act of creation. Descartes should thus have been more explicit in setting forth his famous expression: “Je pense donc Dieu suis!” (I think, therefore I am God”!).

Artists of the spirit

2009-01-20T17:39:00.000-08:00

(some definitions in the comments section.)

In my view, there are only two possible routes to metaphysics (first philosophy): either one starts with relation to go to substance, or one starts with relation to do away with substance. There are presently two philosophies on the market, not three, two, and to divide philosophy between philosophy of spirit on the one hand, and philosophy of relation on the other hand, is a mirage, for what else does human intelligence do but abstract and produce universals... and what is the universal but a relation!

Therein lies the choice, since we are de facto obligated to start with relation: either we start from there to climb up to substance, or we turn our back to substance and we let ourselves drift with the current of logic. This is what the Buddhists do, pushing the dialectic to its extreme limits, to the point where it is in denial of itself, where it lifts the spirit as in a state of splendor. The Buddhists annihilate the spirit as Heidegger annihilates beings (das Seiende) to make (being of) being gush out. But if I deny reality to make being gush out, what remains? By Jove, what remains is being in the mind, which is not being! And so I can just as well call that being or non being, like I could call it Geraldine or Albatross!

As the human spirit can create relations but not being, many have been seduced by a metaphysics of relation, for in this manner they become creators. With a metaphysics of being, we receive, whereas with a metaphysics of relation, we have the privilege of creating links and rapports, to the point of absurdness. We thus can see the possible confusion between metaphysics and a philosophy of art, even though the latter is at the service of a philosophy of substance. In my view, Buddhists are more artists than they are philosophers. In fact, they have seduced and still seduce quite a few Western artists. They are artists of the spirit.

Two sources

2009-01-16T16:18:00.000-08:00

I see in philosophy - in others words the thought of humankind - two main possible starting points: thought which starts by reflecting upon itself, and thought which starts by reflecting upon what is not itself.

In this respect, it is not correct, in the natural order, to say that we begin by reflecting upon ourselves. That is not what the child does! The child marvels on what around him is not him! Aristotle in this way seems to me to have this child spirit which marvels over what surrounds him and asks the why of things, whereas, for some time now, the Moderns have preferred the infantile spirit to the spirit of infancy - although they are persuaded of the contrary.

It follows that by starting with a philosophy of the spirit (or more exactly of relation - for the mind can radically only invent relations), negation evidently takes a capital importance, given that the spirit measures all the rest, and that the rest does not measure the spirit.

The two principal sources of Western philosophy are incarnated by Plato and Aristotle. The former developed a philosophy of relation, all sorts of relations, mostly proceeding from intuition and from a poetical inspiration which he had a gift for; the latter developed a philosophy of reality.

Have there been other philosophies since that time? Not to my knowledge. The immense majority of newer philosophies are philosophies of relation: Descartes with his "Cogito Ergo sum", setting explicitly his thought as solely reliable and as the first stone of all his research (he went as far as to indicate that he turned his back to Aristotle, and was therefore quite conscious of what he was doing); Hegel for whom the spirit also primes, the spirit being the spirit which transforms itself, and relation substituting itself clearly to substance; Nietzsche for whom man is the artistic person; Marx for whom man is the working man and who idealizes... matter!; Kant for whom what primes is transcendental subjectivity; Heidegger for whom being is being in the mind, and who reduces beings to... nothing. I don't see for that matter any other starting point which would not be either reality or relations produced by the mind, for philosophy would have to have a third actor which would be neither reality nor intelligence! I don't see any other... unless obviously if the profound nature of reality and/or of human nature were to change!

At the end of the day, the difference is there: there are those for whom being imposes itself to intelligence, and there are the others. In other words, either we accept that it is being which measures intelligence, and eventually, at the crest, being qua being, or we want to dominate over being, and in that case anything goes, absolutely anything! Further, to deny or refuse to give priority to being over spirit leads most often to stumbling into dialectics, with little chance of escaping from them.

If one does not accept to be dominated by being, and as one progressively discovers that it is via this route that intelligence attains its true nobility, then anything is possible, and it is this term "possible" which takes precedence over anything, for if intelligence is made essentially for being, to deny this leads to a suicide of the spirit. Therefore, that's where the choice lays, and, moreover and in my opinion, it would be rather sensible not to stray down the wrong path.

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Essence of a nightmare

2009-01-12T07:04:00.000-08:00

I've just realized something.

In our dreams, there is no final cause, and this is especially perceptible in a nightmare, in which one is absolutely engulfed in the efficient causality: you sink in the moving sands without knowing why... and the moving sands are the efficient cause. The essence of a nightmare is to find yourself entrapped in a pure efficient causality.

"Hell", the absolute drama, is a pure efficient causality, and by "pure" I mean that it is an errant cause, i.e. separated from its final causality. It is the hand cut off from the rest of the body, only the separated efficience remains.

In other words our life is a nightmare as long as we don't reach our end, the trap being to put all our energy in making the pure efficient causality agreeable. But then we remain only in change and errancy, for where being is no longer apprehended, the final causality disappears, since final causality is fundamentally "being in Act", being that attracts.

Incidentally, psychology only looks at the efficient cause, conditioning and change.Yet there can be no perfect psychological knowledge which is not ordered towards a philosophy of finality. Someone like Freud is not afraid of attributing the rank of the final cause to the errant cause! I can't help to think, what a paltry figure Freud was!

Talent

2009-01-10T15:15:00.000-08:00

Talent doesn’t exist, not in the commonly viewed acception. It is said that talent is a particular disposition, all right, but which disposition is that? Fundamentally it is a desire towards something, which sometimes borders on obsession, thus goes too far. Bach for instance repeated to whom would listen to him that if anybody worked as much as he did, anybody could be Bach. And who can work as much as Bach? Only he who loves and desires music for itself as much as Bach did!

That’s what it boils down to, the heart of talent is there: desire. You might argue that there is desire and desire, for some desire and never achieve anything, at least they don’t go very far.But what is it precisely that they desire? Often reputation, or to get revenge from life, or originality at all costs, or maybe they just desire to become an artist. In short, they desire all sorts of things which are not a pure enough desire, and ultimately boil down to a desire of oneself or an autistic and foolish egocentrism.

Thus, talent also serves to purify a desire of a reality which is exterior to us. In art (or even in craftwork or in work in general) there are two things, a term and an end. The term, your working matter will always claim victory over it; it is the limit, be it time or whatever else, what in any case is irreducible to your idea... thus, in one way or another it is the working matter itself. The end is what finalizes you. So something is finished not when the term has rung, but when you can look at what you have created and understand that your working matter has kept its secret but that in this cooperation between it and you, you have in some way succeeded to make its secret seep, you by insufflating your insight and your idea, therefore ultimately your capacity to desire, your working matter in keeping its secret and nevertheless cooperating with you.

Therefore, someone who has a talent is firstly a person who loves his working matter, for itself, before wanting to transform it, and above all who loves it to the point that he knows he will never be quite victorious of it.That’s the first aspect, and at this stage, the blockheads are out of the picture even before the gun sounds because they are people who absolutely want to dominate, who are incapable of saying: this is grand, I am overwhelmed. For that matter it is the reason why they ingurgitate antidepressant pills, for it is quite depressing to stay confined within oneself, and only reality can make me lift off, thus something other than me, or someone else, and that is what realistic love is, and that’s why it’s the most sublime thing to be realist, face to face with reality, in the form of a person or a working matter.

In short, talent consists very essentially not in accepting to be surpassed, but in wanting it truly, passionately, obstinately. So then you will retort "but everyone is surpassed, without necessarily having any talent". Well I say that is not the case, and to back up my claim I will use an image. If you see St Peter’s Basilica in Rome from a distance, to be truly surpassed you have to advance to its foot, that’s were you touch the vertigo in all of its measure. If you are a distance away, you eye it up and down, you imagine the Basilica, and your idea of the Basilica does not impose itself to you, you impose yourself to it. With art it is the same thing, there are those who watch from the sidelines whilst claiming to be humble, but who in actual fact don’t have the desire to come closer, half-hearted individuals, middle-of-the-roaders who embrace quantity and ignore quality, that’s what they are! Then there are those who are fascinated by a reality, who seek unquestionably to approach it, to get closer to it at each new occasion, and who truly feel the immensity of their subject, who are the only ones capable of humility, not at all cretinous, for they are faced with the immensity of reality... Someone once pronounced these admirable words: “humility is truth”. I have never heard the heart of reality beat so closely. But you cannot hear the secrets thump without approaching reality, instead of trailing your hemorrhoids around the beltway of your misgivings.

Thus a truly alive person doesn’t cease to interrogate reality, be that in transforming a matter or in love. In the first case we interrogate our working matter, and in the second case the person we love. We don’t ask “Why do you not love me anymore, or why do I not love you?”, but “why do you love me?”. An intelligence that doesn’t interrogate or ceases to do so is moribund.

Talent is desire on the one hand and the right questions on the other hand.

I might add, as we are on the subject of art, that Aristotle made this rather remarkable comment: if all realities were works of art, substance would be the idea of an artist. From there and through analogy, negating substance amounts to looking at a painting or a text without grasping any signification. Many of us enter into first philosophy through philosophy of art, given that the dominant culture is an artistic one, to be more precise a pseudo artistic one, but it is the approach that often predominates... man wanting to be the creator of all things. And what is the fundamental determination of a work of art? It is obviously the idea and the project of an artist. Thus Aristotle’s short phrase (which is to be found in the Zeta book of metaphysics) is quite astute as it aids in understanding what substance is.

Categorical imperative

2009-01-07T12:00:00.000-08:00

The more I look at it, the more I see that Kant´s categorical moral imperative (i.e. "duty") has done considerable harm to Western civilisation. Yet it still holds sway, the entire Western political spectrum rests on it, maybe even the entire world political spectrum, from the far left to the far right. Further, one must realize that without Kant, Freud would have never existed.

Look, if you consider that in a same day one sleeps and one is awake, this begets the question of whether sleep is an imperfect state relative to the state of being awake. For Kant, to be awake is to do ones' duty. It was thus left to Freud to explain that sleep is that state in which our instinct rips off the camisole which duty is, which each of us don all others. In other words, for Freud, our instinct is our primitive state, savage and amoral, the virgin state which escapes from what culture, education and the collective circus imposes unduly on each individual. To summarize, Kant reduces the state of being awake to morality, and in response to this farce, Freud, through a quite infantile dialectic, has inversed the perfect (ruined by Kant) and the imperfect, i.e. has inversed the state of being awake and sleep, by withdrawing to instinct under the pretext that he escapes from the moralizing ruin of human reality.

There is nothing more destructive than to diminish reality, all the more so when it is sublime. The Western world is presently almost entirely subordinated to humanitarian moral atheism and Kantian anthropology. I would hardly be surprised if more and more irreproachable men, well educated, perfect examples of morality and duty, should suddenly commit abominable acts, muting at night in a sort of sub-animal species, for neither morality nor duty come first, and, in fact, it is so absurd to think such a thing that the most monstruous human instincts would not cease to seek revenge since morality assumes nothing of the grim underpinnings of human nature, nothing at all. Morality and duty are consequences, and one must beware the back draft if they are put to the fore.

The Soul

2009-01-05T06:08:00.000-08:00

Someone recently asked me: "The soul? What type of thingamajig is that?" The soul, as type of thingamajig, is for example, when you have two different usernames, it is still you. You're chuckling, but some people are persuaded that they live solely by their username, and if it is deleted, there is nothing beyond that. One must absolutely not tinker with their subscription, lest they have excruciating anguishes!

Tis true, you have no experience other than affective of your soul, at least during the period of your subscription, because if your soul leaves your Internet provider, then you become completely free. Plato635 said it a while back, so you see, it's hardly anything new under the sun. Plato635 is about 850.000.000 page views before AOL. Later on, JC specified that upon resurrection each of us would have a glorious username, but this would lead us to a theology of the username, which would be too much to see in one go.

Divorce

2009-01-03T09:34:00.000-08:00

My beloved headbutt and I, from the second we glanced at each other, we knew we were made to divorce one from another. We did not have the same neuron type: incompatible in case of a transfusion. She was zero++ and I was a grouper, but also ++. Inevitably, we experienced a lightning jolt short-circuit. Now it's done, and I have come to understand that it isn't useful to put off to today what can be done yesterday. But careful, because one must be creative when one divorces beforehand, there are no common goods, and one must absolutely find common goods for it to nonetheless be a real divorce, for the sake of argument, else the whole thing is null and void. So I had to think it over for a while. Beloved headbutt had forgotten her flip-flops at my place so I told her: "if ever you come back, I shall dump your flip-flops in the dustbin. She answered: "Ooooh, you jackass, that's blackmail!" I added: "maybe, but it will be your flip-flops or me". She retorted: "I don't give a hoot, but anyways you forgot yours at my place and I already put them in the dustbin". All that was left for me to do was to set forward my responsive conclusions: "All right, then I will never come over to your place again, it's pointless." So there, I won the divorce case by knockout and I managed to impose the amicable judgement to her expense. But, hey, one must not imagine it is a piece of cake either. It took me a year to carry out my plan, which is a long while but not much compared to many other cases. The others are blockheads, they get married then they are convinced that they will see how it pans out along the way. And in fact they know very well what will pan out: they will have to divorce sooner or later and they will be at a loss because they have not planned ahead, instead of divorcing immediately, whereupon one is assured of tranquillity. I have a friend who has been divorcing for five years. He pays judges, clerks, and what have you, and even they can't do anything for him. The other day he came over and asked if I had a stopper for his carafe. And I told him that I did, but since I also have the carafe, I keep the stopper. He explained, the blockhead, that he only has the carafe because his wife kept the stopper. As plain as a nose on a face! It is only now that he understands that he should have divorced before getting married, when everything belonged to him. It's really none of my business, but it's a shame one has to explain these things only when it's too late!

Indifference

2009-01-01T09:45:00.000-08:00

It is fashionable to consider indifference as a sentiment, even as a "wise" sentiment, an approach possibly drawn unconsciously on Greek stoicism and also in some sense on the teachings of Buddha (no desire, no suffering). I have even heard that indifference is the opposite of love. One could treat this assertion in an ironico-comical way by having the big drum of the absurd resonate: "If indifference is the opposite of love, it is also the opposite of hate, and thus love and hate, having the same opposite, are one and the same thing". I'm not sure that this farce is so absurd in some cases.

The same approach, this time with the pretension of gunning down metaphysics, wants firstly to look at nothingness as the inverse of being. But nothingness, in other words what doesn't exist, is no more the inverse of anything than the inverse of itself, since it doesn't exist! It is already not convenient to signify being, but the representation of "what is not" frankly makes one giddy. That's probably why this approach is in style: it procures a sensation, not unlike that of the Kingda Ka roller coaster, of which I have always thought was the poodle's chance of having an intuition of being.

Yet, given that indifference is the absence of sentiment, it is the non sentiment par excellence! Exactly in the same way that silence is not the inverse of noise but the absence of noise, illness the absence of health, and finally evil the absence of good, and in no way the inverse. That's a whole other ball game! And this is fortunate, for if in Swiss cheese the holes were the inverse of cheese, needless to say your cheese would have a rather odd taste!

Some buffoons, to maintain willy-nilly the primacy of nothingness and negation, have not been loath to affirm that noise was the absence of absence of noise. Jean-Paul Sartre has shined singularly of an intergalactic cretinism on this matter, leading several generations to a suicide of their intelligence, for what falls first in intelligence is being, not nothingness!

To get back to "indifference", the final prestidigitation consists often in assimilating indifference (or apathy) to contempt. But contempt is an active form of sentiment, model derived from hate with specific qualified accessories. This error is not that of Buddhism, for apathy assumes with Buddha the form of a certain compassion. I admit for the rest that I have always thought that Buddha was more of an artist than a mystic (contemplating the "chose en soi"), which seems to be confirmed by many westerners whom at one time or another were seduced by Buddha (Nietzsche, Cioran), thinkers primarily on a quest that art save man and the world, at least from suffering.

Art of writing

2008-12-29T03:05:00.000-08:00

Art does not consist in underlining what already is, but to transform it, to infuse an idea into a working matter. For example, writing has three elements: what is in our mind, the art of writing, and words - the working matter with which one cooperates, but which in any case keeps its secret, until the very end; one can only try to extract to some degree the secret of a word.

With music, it's the same thing: there is what is in our mind, the art of writing, and finally the notes and sounds. It is the same for any art! So someone who does not write well, is often someone who isn't doing well or who has nothing to say. The most beautiful pages I have come to read were written by people without an epistolary experience, but who have a sensibility, an intelligence and a profound internal life. So even their “mistakes” are pearls.Then you have people who know how to write but who have nothing to say... And there are quite a few!

Further, one must distinguish those who know how to write but who seem to be disliked and resisted by words, who don't have much of a style... from those who, despite their real lack of inspiration, nevertheless manage to stroke words in the sense of the comma... without ever saying anything interesting (ie profound, interior, animated).

Finally, you have those who have a real interiority, combined with an experience of writing: they have a style, words flirt indefinitely with them. These are few and far between in my opinion. It is very difficult to tame words, for they never lie, they are what we make of them, and at the same time you cannot do what you want with them... that is the whole difficulty! A word can say what you think, but you must think, and sometimes it can better express than you what you think, but to think it or to hope it makes the right word elude you instantly...

I assure you, writing words is something nuts, one must be rather audacious! This matter is not so simple ultimately. One can, for example, seek to convey an emotion, but which emotion is that? For that is the question!! If it is an emotion of intelligence, you do not go about it in quite the same fashion as an emotion of the senses, even interior and poetic... you must actually proscribe flattering external and internal senses if you seek an emotion of intelligence, else you risk submerging what you were seeking to communicate...

I see that for a text to be finished, a real text, the author must feel objectively that it is no longer his text, and must even be able to be measured by what he has written, else it is not a good text, independently of the content. I do believe it is the same for any artistic endeavor.

Drama

2008-12-24T15:09:00.000-08:00

Painting by Albert Edelfelt (1854-1905)

The fact that truth belongs to no one, whereas a good is always personal, is the drama of human life. In essence, all literature and novels revolve around this, because the cause of jealousy is there: the fear of losing ones' good. Whereas with truth that isn't the case, we don't have the same drama, truth belongs to no one, therefore no one can take it from us... and that's probably why we are not so much on a quest for truth, given that we cannot possess it. Which, for those with a religious faith, begets the following question: is "God" truth or is "God" my good? I ask this because if "God" were only truth, they wouldn't be quarrelling, as sometimes happens, as if they wanted to possess him!

Skin

2008-12-24T14:11:00.000-08:00

Skin is what enables contact with the outside world, in other words with another being. Only those who aren't burnt to the umpteenth degree, or aren't hypersensitive, feel well under their skin, it's easy to understand, and can reach out and touch the others. Those who don't have any skin or only little bits and pieces of skin, are blockheads who stay in their corner and become even more blockheadish, by dint of being blockheadish.

Therefore, look how silly they can be sometimes, when they say "oh him, he feels well in his skin!" What does it mean? If you ask most anyone will retort "Are you silly or what? That means he feels good inside of himself!"... Well no, THEY are the blockheads! Actually, that means that he feels the others well, and that's a whole other ball game. The blockheads, for them, the skin is made to get in touch with themselves. How blockheadish can one get! And thus the numskulls who "find themselves", by getting in touch with themselves, look at themselves, contrary to those who find or look at the others.

I wonder if to feel good in ones' skin, to touch the outside world, and of course to let the outside world touch you, is not something akin to holyness, in lieu of feeling oneself, like the dimwits. One must be easy to please, and to be easy to please one must preferably be perspicacious, with a dash of youthful spirit and a certain purity of heart, else one is not easy to please, there is no way around it. I say this because some are happy to be blockheads, I assure you, positively, there are even more than a few: "I don't get wound up over things"... All right, we're starting to get the picture that you wind up your wrist watch in the morning and not your head!

To make a long story short, it's not too detrimental to be taken for a ride, even if it hurts a bit. In the last analysis you heal well and it's by and large much less cavernous than to find yourself looking at yourself or to look to find yourself, because then you are not at all easy to please, and further it is such a bore, I mean, you do exactly as you please, but it's rather noxious... there is no suspense... just by reading the title one understands the end... it's always the same... a dead giveaway.

Buddhist metaphysics

2008-12-24T13:41:00.000-08:00

As human wisdom, in the last analysis, Buddhism is a metaphysics of relation. I'm not considering the theological aspect here, should there be any to consider, because that is more akin to mythology, thus infantilism, with Buddha being born to his mother and an elephant, etc.

In other words, Buddhism doesn't attain being. A poetic layer is then superimposed, quite a lovely one for that matter, which equates being and non being, and then you can go listen to a Tibetan gong for an eternity of immobile seconds.

That is what bothers me most in Buddhism, at least what I know of it, just the basics, it is the infantilism of its metaphysics. At the end of the day it is a philosophy of the absurd, something that places the spirit face to face with the absurd, and it is this absurdness which probes the spirit form which emerges the smile of Buddha... which should give one an irresistible urge to wipe it off!

Everything flows, everything is change... relation is illusion.

Actually, I prefer Indian metaphysics, at least there are two of them, like everywhere, one of being and one of relation, but there is one of being.

The Reign of Quantity

2008-12-24T10:41:00.000-08:00

Portrait of Rene Geunon

Quality? It is one of the ten categories of substance. In short, and despite the opinions of all types of labelizors of products and services such as ISO thingamajig, it seems that quality cannot be measured. In this respect it is often opposed to quantity, which is also one of the ten categories of substance, but which, it, is measurable. Thus, friendship/love pertains eminently to quality, for how much could love weigh, or measure in height, width or depth?

Following the great traditions of the world, we are presently under the reign of quantity, 4th and last era say the Hindus for example, age of Iron which they call Kali Yuga, but which is often cited elsewhere, including by JC. In effect, efficiency rules far and wide, and we even try to measure quality, thus love. For this reason we prefer our feelings and emotions, which even if they are equally not easily measurable, are nevertheless perceived and experienced in an immanent and immediate fashion, whereas love is in the last analysis what remains when there is no emotion left, even if obviously love and emotion don't exclude one another. Yet we decree: no emotion, no love.

In this regard, the modern day westerner resembles the Greek barbarian of whom the Ancients said he destroys that which he doesn't understand. In effect, here we stand as Barbarians, mistaking truth with certainty (certainty being most often what is scientifically demonstrated), in other words we negate what we do not understand or cannot demonstrate. This is symptomatic of the tyranny of the reign of quantity. In this respect, Rene Geunon's Book "Signs of Our Times: A Critical Appraisal of The Reign of Quantity", written in the 1950's, is quasi-prophetic.

Good

2008-12-24T09:06:00.000-08:00

It's curious how this term has absolutely contradictory definitions, to the extent that the history of good is a succession of consented degradations.

Good is what is good for us, thus happiness. In that sense, a good, even if we say "my good", doesn't belong to anyone, it is not a possession, we hang on to it, all right, but we do not possess our good, because it is not to be found inside of us, it is on the contrary something fundamentally distinct from us, for example a person we love, thus essentially what is not us and that which we do not possess. In this first acceptation, a good is what attracts, thus precisely what is not us and makes us come out of ourselves.

Then we reduced good to a moral sense: good and bad. In reality, this is probably because Aristotle showed happiness as being linked to virtue: a good musician makes good music, a good man creates happiness, a bad man creates unhappiness. That's what Aristotle's ethics are based on, what he calls the science of happiness. Thus, after him, we have not ceased to undertake to isolate good to turn it into a primary and self-sufficient moral, a moral for its own sake. And today we continue on with those famed values, those of the Republic, those of the company, etc. because obviously we hardly speak of morality anymore, that wouldn't be progressive.

And finally, in the full logic of a mindless state ardently yearned for all, now that we find ourselves under the full-fledged dominion of quantity, good has become a synonym of possession, e.g. our real estate good, in other terms, by reinjecting the original meaning: our real estate happiness... Therefore, there is a price tag to happiness, your stock of happiness is necessarily quoted on Wall Street, and if you speculate on it, it's price goes up or down. For example, if everyone starts buying happiness in the form of disposable G-strings, tada, its price climbs, your rear end is up in the air and you're in tip top shape, but if people start selling short biological yogurts because no one wants them anymore, and your fridge is full of them, your happiness chart hits rock bottom and you become depressed, you are worth a lonely symbolic dollar.