Note 40 (Thoughts on Hegel Intro)

The concept of an "I" is the failure of self-referentiality; it is the (non)-thing that cannot be identified.

The subject is an object which does not exist.

This is the starting point of freedom, which is the non-identification of a (non)-thing, as well as of desire, which is the process of identification.

The pathway of self-identification, as well as the philosophy of history, relates to the interaction of four key groups of parameters, that which can and cannot be known, and that which can and cannot be made conscious.

Social acts are essentially the interplay of values; values are the modality of identification of the self and the collective. Social forms, such as discourse, norms, and institutions, are channels for this interplay, which may be dialectical, evolutionary or otherwise.

Quote 9

"Nietzsche’s work relentlessly undermines the elevation of ‘literal’ over ‘metaphorical’ truth. He argues that we cannot privilege literal or ‘pure’ truth over metaphor because truth is itself a metaphor that has been invented to lend authority to particular forms of thought and styles of living. He argues repeatedly, for example, that the ‘truths’ of religious teaching are really dominant perspectives upon the meaning of human experience employed to establish the prestige of a community’s way of life (Spinks, 2003)." - Ruwan Jayatunge on The Nation

Existence

Existence is that which closes off possibilities. It exists because existence is itself.

But the existence of an existence cannot be given within existence itself: it must be given through a set of criteria which defines the terms of existence, and the conditions of existence.

The terms of existence define that which may be said to exist, while the conditions of existence defines that which exists.

Existence is the concretization of the conditions of existence in relation to the terms of existence.

In being that concretization, it identifies (or gives content to) the conditions of existence.

But in order to do so, existence is necessarily in the state of existing to which the concretization refers.

But, in being both the concretized condition of existence, as well as the state of existing, existence relates itself to itself.

Therefore existence is paradox and duality: condition and existence. It is infinite duality.

In other words, when we speak of existence, we refer to the possibility of the conceptualization of the actuality, as well as the actuality through which the possibility of the conceptualization is made meaningful. We have no other examples. But even if we had, we would not call it existence.

So an applied conception of existence creates dualities, depending on the role which the concept performs.

Hence we get absurdities: idealism and materialism are both sides of the same coin, so to speak.

This is the problem engendered in Hegel's quote: All identification is self-identity.

More: all manifested ideas are identified, hence all manifested ideas are self-identifying.

In this sense, duality comes about through the identification process of a concept.

***

We could have many universes. Each universe would be a fact referring itself to itself, as a minimum condition.

The world is fundamentally unity, as a necessary condition of its existence, its referring of itself to itself.

Existence is relative when applied, but absolute in conception.

A possible solution to the brain in a vat.

Facts are referred to other facts. A universe of facts is the world of inter-referring facts.

Existence is the act of something referring itself to itself.

It refers the terms of its own existence to the state of its being.

The state of its being is constitutively self-referring.

Christmas Day Reflection on Kim Jong Il and Power

A Hitler, a Stalin, or a Kim Jong Il is NOT as pathological, in terms of drives, as we are usually led to think. Assuming a relative equality among persons, I'd like to think of us as repressed versions of them.

It is the relative order of significance to which we attribute certain aspects of our lives as they do to theirs which characterize the huge differences in consequences.

In fact, the inflation of the significance of the tiniest details and trivialities of our daily lives can be understood best as the same function acting out on a much smaller scale, but with no less absoluteness.

So it is the factors which affect the positing of significances to events which is the crucial difference here.

It is the capacity of the tyrant to overlook the factors that limit his desire for power that distinguishes him - and it is his interpretation of the world that crucially cannot be accomodated because of its real effects.

Ultimately, like us, he needs to sustain a view of the level of significance of the obstacles which lie in his path in order to locate his identity within the coordinates of control and power over significant things. But his approach differs: as we elevate the value of the smallest things, he consumes and destroys greater and greater amounts to sustain a level of said satisfaction.

Of course, the former approach is to be preferred to the latter, while 'successful people' are characterized by the enviable ability to cultivate and balance the two approaches.

Euthyphro

Plato's short dialogue on piety culminates in negatives; its greatest insight is to expose the fundamental incompatibilities of two disparate cosmological propositions: that of a universally valid standard of meaning and the good, against the standards seen to derive from the caprices of the Greek pantheon. This contradiction has come to be known as the Euthyphro's dilemma.

However, the present interest lies in the fact that this incompatibility was not in itself the main focus at the point where it was raised. Socrates introduced the issue in his attempts to examine and disprove Euthyphro's assertion that the pious is that which is God-loved. For simplicity's sake, we will take that to mean that a necessary but insufficient aspect of the pious, is that it is God-loved.

Socrates's arguments run as such:

1. A thing is God-loved because God loves the thing, not because it is inherently God-loved. (The adverb sequentially succeeds the verb. Being God-loved is not a quality inherent in the thing).

2. The pious is God-loved because of its piousness. (Being God-loved is a quality inherent in the definition of piousness).

3. From 2, it follows that (all?) God-loved things are God-loved because they are inherently God-loved.

4. This in opposition to 1., therefore only one of the statements, 1 or 2, can be true; being mutually exclusive, they cannot be true at the same time.

Now, the fishy points in the argument lie in 2 and 3. It becomes apparent after some thought that in the course of the argument, Socrates must commit the implicit assumption that if piousness was pious not because of God's love (but due to some external standard), then God's love of piousness must derive not from God's act of loving, but from the implicit inherency of God's love as a quality in the thing. In other words, it assumes that the only way in which God can love the pious is if that which God-loves (namely, the pious) was, in essence the God-loved. By that score, nothing that is God-loved can be anything else but THE God-loved. Again, in other words, it assumes the truth of the bracketed statement in thread 2 of the above argument, when of course, requiring God's love by definition certainly does not mean in any way that something is God-loved in its original state. It is a complex form of the age-old straw man fallacy.

This would then trap Euthyphro in the depths of the Euthyphro dilemma which is in fact not bound up directly with the argument at hand.

Musing

If the reason of the founding of a city is the recognition that mutual benefit, materially and in terms of security, can arise, then the basis of the necessity of noble lie must lie in the belief that the established rational basis for the allocation of power within the city is precarious against human greed and striving.

By associating the citizens of the city with a higher order, the noble lie widens the range of those whom the individual identifies with as his own to include the whole city, thereby dissipating self-interest. However, this is but a preparative to Socrates's wider goal to dispel material wants completely within the perfect city. The identities of clan and self contain tacit boundaries which exclude those beyond; in such divisions lie the source and justification of private possession, both of knowledge and of goods. Socrates significantly neglects the needs of the body in attempting to reshape the way citizens expect their needs to be met in the city; he realizes that the bodily wants, of which a majority are in a nature of private goods, reconciles human greed with human selfishness; poisons the nature of identity and man's need to belong. Socrates overhauls both the impacts of identities on men's choices and the identities themselves.

The new identities Socrates propose attach themselves along the defining characteristics of vocation and their attending class. The mode of creation, rather than consumption and need, becomes the flag to which men rally by. He lends it the allure of divine fulfillment, aiding men's necessarily selfconscious tempering of his bodily wants.

At this point however, one must consider if Socrates indeed saw moderation as a virtue worthy of huge sacrifices beyond the material, or if the impetus to turn his citizens into purely political creatures reached an end in itself. For it would be surely draconian and unjustifiable to go to such lengths, indeed, breach the limits of human nature, in the name of moderation. Perhaps Socrates attempted to align human lifestyles to divinely virtue, therefore requiring religious observance in his subjects.

The necessity of the noble lie should be debated as well. Enlightenment thinkers believed in channeling of human self interest into activities that would fulfill an alternative set of moralities and result in mutual benefit. The worker and the consumer benefits. In contrast, the noble lie seeks to limit the meaning and concept of the consumer. Socrates attempts to reverse the demand and supply driven relationship between consumer and worker; in his city, the consumer exists for the worker. Such a lie is therefore necessary, it seems, if human survival and human invirtue derive from the same source, bringing forth yet another example of Platonic tragicomedy. Nevertheless, it remains to be seen if the replacement of self-interest with self-neglecting loyalty marks any real progress.

In certain conceptions of Enlightenment societies, the "common good" does not extend beyond the sum of individual good. Society merely acts as enforcers of laws that maximize individual good. For Plato, individual benefit is sacrificed in the name of checks and balances against injustice. Therefore it must arise out of a deep suspicion of the citizens in the city; a strong belief in their potential to be corrupted and manipulated. In proposing draconian static laws, the role of institutions are diminished into enforcers: warriors, not philosophers.

Rant 2

Seeing that I have no fresh topic to write about, I will continue with my tiring analysis of the Chinese issue. I came across a pertinent article about the difference between what we classify as the Western approach to discourse and the Eastern one. In the article, a French philosopher made the claim that intellectuals in the West engaging in discourse had the propensity to apply self-criticism in the evaluation of their ideas, both in terms of the philosophic validity of their ends, and the effectiveness of the solutions proposed. Certainly, it is the prevalence of the former that clearly sets apart a progressive climate of discourse in the West from a relatively traditional one in the East. In China, the social and cultural curbs, arising from the doctrines of Confucianism and Communism that remained unchallenged publicly in the arena of rational debate, mark out the limits- consciously for only some- of the scope for intellectual contribution and by extension, the range of what is defined as intellectual and respected at all. Hence thinking is confined to the best ways to achieve accepted larger ends.

Obviously, my knowledge of China is shaky at best, but I think the social and political developments of the past 50 years or so do demonstrate the confusion in China over the ideas it came to adopt from the West, and even modern China's confusion over its dynastic ones. That Mao could push through disastrous policies (the Cultural Revolution) without ever having to purge his party officials to the degree that Stalin had to; for Chinese youths to reject simply the moral ideals that China even more simply held on to for centuries; for large sections of the populace to subscribe radically to a monarchic cult that mocked the substance of communism; and finally, for the focus of the entire population to change, after that spell of anarchic euphoria posing as ideological warfare, to the means of the capitalistic production it so fervently erased every glimpse of just ten years earlier. (Think about Russia).

To return to my earliest paragraph, the debatibilty of the fundamental philosophic issues- morality, the definition and desirability of justice applied in the political setting, the means to achieving the ideal city- these are the hallmarks of the advanced society over the traditional one. For these require the objectification of argument, the recognition that standards of judgment which stand apart from the subjective exist and should be respected. One no longer necessarily supports one's own clan, and expects his opponent to support his own; the fidelity to the standards themselves (morality, reason) become the judge against the position put forth. Therefore there is a recourse to truth, one that is argued into agreement, and therefore, criticism and self-criticism becomes an objective activity. For instance, an opponent might argue that your point is flawed, but we recognize that the reason lies in the failure of the argument to live up to some standard, rather than that the argument arose from you. Therefore, it (ideally) distinguishes criticism in debate from personal critique, which allows the focus of the argument to turn away from the individual to the issue. And philosophic questions indicate recognition of the underlying assumptions and values, those which are potentially most difficult to change.

Obviously, it would be an advancement if one were to recognize that such standards were valid, if only so for their utility.

About The Controversial Cartoons

The Dutch are at it again. All too selfconsciously being the political equivalent of the avant garde, initiating a pilgrimage into the hellfire of human anger that desecrated sancity arouses. Their destination lies in the pasture of ideas beyond, ideas that ascend above the sea of untided emotion to give man to appreciate the sovereign rights of man; to glide us through the winds on the wingtips of freedom with the vantage view of ourselves below.

The fundamental rights of man predicates on the premise that no free will should be coerced out of its freedom of thought or speech by the force of another independent of one's own. The Dutch cartoons were directed assertions of that principle in a continent where heightened sensitivity to racial and religious taboos has induced self-censorship in the discussion of issues such as immigration and terrorism.

But the fact that the promotion of free speech, a brilliantly conceived idea, had led to such insoluble quandries was highly intriguing, at first. Of course, there were the usual mediocre articles that explained the ideas away in the context of cultural differences. They were not wrong; their fault was in being content with easy explanations, as if to resolve the writer's own need for contentment and a clear decision (with the usual constructive solutions). (Although this is only representative of the few I read). Even if cultural differences did not exist, the philosophical ones which drove deeper did.

I guess that a layman's (my) interpretation of the whole state of affairs would be among one of the few below:

One, that the Dutch papers should not have published the cartoons at all for they simply abused free speech; they do not assert or promote it. Or worse, publishing them is akin to physical crime in the name of freedom, a flagrant breach of the spirit of freedom that grounds sovereign rights.

Two, that the Dutch papers should not have published them for the very purpose of promoting free speech is reversed by the backlash. (This among such other practical reasons I don't care about.)

Three, that the papers were right, for resistence and unhappiness of other wills made the freedom of speech a principle in the the first place. Backing down would constitue an unwillingness to uphold the original ideal.

Four, other reasons I don't care about today.

Now, the perimeters of human rights lie where they run in opposition to that of others. (Again, rights are freedoms from other people). As such, it is obvious that physical harm against the victim's will is a breach of rights, hence a prohibited act.
Of course, the the cartoon fiasco begins where the editor does indeed have the right to publish the offensive pictures, and Muslims have to respect his right to publish the cartoons (and therefore not coerce him in any way not to publish them). However, what rights, then, does the Moslem have, when insulted and distressed thus? It is the right to be free from his distress and hurt when that which he reveres is made base; it is freedom from his reaction to others, freedom from himself.

The aforementioned cultural difference between "the Muslim World and the West" (which is really a loose term for the more relevant philosophical difference, and as such divides attitudes unparallel to cultural adherence) would secure the traditional Moslem's choice of reaction, that is, a rejection of the cartoonist's rights and catcalls for holy blights and Godhate's revenge. But that is not the point. To pretend that it is distracts us from the inadequacy inherent within the codes of human rights itself. At deeper levels (of conflict), human rights founder simply because it fails to see that constraints of the human condition inherently limit man's freedom from other men, and that the mutual exclusivity of human rights that result thus require a different set of moral guides to secure the primacy of one right at the expense of another, to affirm or condemn a set of actions. Criminalization and law, for instance.

"Social responsibility" as the imperative to curb human rights can be interpreted as such: responsibility comes from the control we have over the emotions (or the environment) of others. Social responsibility as an approach deals with the fact that the nature of social contact that gave rise to the concept of human rights does not reflect that principle in reality. Human rights fail there; so social responsibility avoids it.

However, the concept of responsibility carries within it the implicit danger of consequences. Therefore the concept alone is always insufficient to provide the sense of responsibility that guides actions. It needs a guiding arrow external to the concept itself. In the case of the cartoon, the pre-judgement that the freedom of the Muslim World's emotions from the West's provocations is sufficient reason to curb (or self-censor) the freedom of speech, guides the argument for those against the cartoons. Of course, the actions now undertaken by the UN were not spurred with that in mind; forced "responsibility" was invoked for fear of economic and political fallouts. Is this tradeoff then justifiable?

In my opinion, no. Outlawing criticism of religion in the name of social stability paves a slippery slope with regards to free speech. And through its fear of turbulence, it obstructs the flow of ideas that drive progress. Let the viewpoints presented be judged according to their rational merits instead. Only when unattacked on the issue of its right to be published, can controversial or even racist remarks be judged as baseless rationally rather than justified on principle, promoting confusion as to one's intent.

For human rights to work perfectly, it must be be so completely. Nevertheless, it remains applicable; but it can never function on its own. The jurisprudence of one's rights over another's has traditionally been in favour of the individual against those in authority, or, in law, criminalization is guided by the basics of Christian morality.

Im tired. Good day.