Heidegger

In a message dated 09/09/2007 06:31:28 GMT Standard Time,
_michael at sandwich-de-sign.co.uk_ (mailto:michael@sandwich-de-sign.co.uk) writes:

Allen just now:
I was reading a book on memory written by a multi-degreed, much decorated
neuro-scientist In the process of reviewing basic Freud in order to plug the
basic Freudian dynamics into his more biological view of brain function, he
comes out with the following:

“The connection between a slip of the tongue and its cause or between a
symptom and the underlying cognitive process is obscured by the operation of
defences –ubiquitous, dynamic, unconscious mental processes–resulting in a
CONSTANT STRUGGLE BETWEEN SELF REVEALING AND SELF-PROTECTIVE MENTAL EVENTS.”

Aletheia as a “mental event.”? Why not? It reflects a long held, but little
expressed (at least overtly) view of mine that the mental dynamics of my own
neurotic self can be made relevant to my understanding of the work of
concealent/unconcealment in the process of truth, if those dynamics are care-fully,
carefully thought.

Allen, a quick wonder: I wonder about the difference (I perceive) ‘tween
obscuration/protection/hiding and concealing (”the work of concealment”); for
example, in my last statement, although I have so far perhaps obscured or
protected what I mean to say (by not yet explicitly saying, speaking it), I would
not say that I have concealed/hidden/absented it, merely not yet revealed;
more than that, I have begun to point to what is not yet revealed in what I have
revealed (unconcealed) so far. I should like to say that in
protecting/sheltering some thing, the thing might well be obscured/covered partially or
fully by some other thing that is a protecting/sheltering thing, thus precisely
*unconcealing* the protected/sheltered thing in a way
(because protecting things to be protecting things must necessarily be
protecting some other thing of the kind that can be protected by the protecting
thing…). A crypt shelters the encrypted and thereby reveals the presence of
the encrypted. I know, by now, I might well be burying myself in
obscure-rant-isms (so, I’ll shutup) but there’s something there…

Jud:
*Ex-lax* is said to do the trick.

Frankly it is the language that you use that snarls you up into Gnostic
knots.

Why on earth attempt to describe the complexities of neurological processes
employing the inadequate language of a primitive culture from over
two-thousand years ago? To me it is like attempting to conduct a serious heart by-pass
operation using obsidian knives and sutures made from twisted horsehair to
stitch the tissues together, or jockeying an indricotherium in the Grand
National at Aintree. It may well prove to others with a similar obsession for the
*linguistic rough-trade* that you possess an intellectual or esoteric
knowledge of the linguistically lavatorial, but is the abandonment of any vestiges of
reality-contactedness worth the admiration of those similarly trammeled in
such semantic redundancies and corresponding propositional paraphilias?

OK, primitive Greek culture bequeathed a lot to us, but that is no big
deal, for it was the only culture around at that time that happened to have
reached such a stage of development. It was NOT because the ancient Greeks were
racially brighter (or in Heideggerian terms more *German-like*) than anybody
else who was around at the time - they inherited a lot from other cultures
anyway - but because of extraneous topographical and economic circumstances
combined with a well organised system of slavery which freed the oppressors to sit
around and think.

They were in a sense the Japanese of their day, bringing together the
cultural elements of other antecedent and contemporary civilisations and packaging
them as *marketable* concepts. That is NOT to say they weren’t innovative,
but so were the cultures of the Indus River valley, Mesopotamia, Egypt and
elsewhere in faraway South America. In other words they were special - but the
reasons for their uniqueness is explainable, and there is no need to worship
them as gods and mimic their language in the hope that its use will magically
endow one with a special understanding.

Nor is there, as was the case with Heidegger, any sense in believing that
marching up and down in leather briefs, blowing conch-shells, displaying an
Indian fertility sign as a symbol of *the collectivity* and adopting Greek
ideas, Greek aesthetic ideals in art and architecture (but not the Greek
arse-worship, which could get you a pink triangle and a spell in a *factory farm*
for humans) and accepting the Platonic fascism of the *republican*
subjugation of other peoples to slavery.

To believe as Heidegger did that any of the above is going to change an
uncouth nation of pot-bellied, sauerkraut gobblers who had recently emerged
from the forests into the virtuous paragons of the *clean-limbed* sophisticated
Greeks of the *incipience* is madness - a madness which was indeed evidenced
by his self *concealment* in a nearby mental institution on the approach of
the non-Greek barbarians bearing arms and not gifts.

You yourself are aware that you employ obscurantism as you acknowledge
above. You need to decide whether to continue employing all these crap words like
aletheia in contexts for which they were never developed, or to use the more
modern forms developed to allow more clarity of thought and communication.

*Truth* can never be concealed or unconcealed because you cannot hide or
reveal that which does not exist. You may encounter liars and you may encounter
truthful folk, but never *truth.* You will confront completely different
interpretations of correctly thought out and accepted versions of the *truth*
wherever you go. From one person or group to another, from one country or
religion to another - indeed from one personal changing mood to another.

The *truth* you believe, that a certain good friend, politician, work-mate,
colleague, sexual partner is steadfastly on your side and would never bear
you any ill-will is shattered when you discover another *truth* - that they
have been betraying you behind your back for years. *Truth* is an ABSOLUTE
communicated by an abstraction. Any discovery of untruthfulness therefore
negates the whole semantic possibility of *truth.*

The acceptance of ONE lie as being truthful kills the possibility of *Truth*
stone dead. You realise that absolutist truth is a myth, how is one to judge
if what aletheia is claimed to *unconceal* and is the real McCoy or just
another bundle of lies?

If love did exist - it would exist in 6,602,224,300 versions - for every
human lover on earth loves and is loved differently. So it is with truth. So why
not face the fact that *truth* does not exist. Even the *truth* that *2 + 2 =
4* does not exist - it simply means that the acceptance of the computation
of these abstract numbers equalling the abstract number *4* accords with
6,602,224,175 versions of *truth* in the world. Offset that with the exception of
one guy in Outer Mongolia and two people in a mental home in Detroit, whose
version of this particular *truth* is that the abstraction *5* provides it
*truth value.*

If of the 6,602,224,300 people in the world a majority of one, being
33011120 people believed the nutters in Detroit, or the outrageous Outer Mongolian -
were right - would that make it *true? [don’t check my math please.]

Lethe - [léthé ] for the linguistic and lavatorial leaf-users literally
means *concealment.* This is such a kooky idea. Although it has a resonance in
CERTAIN neurological conditions/circumstances, where we deal with traumatic
experiences by blocking or concealing them - in the majority of instances, there
is no deliberate concealment, but simply an inability to remember and recall
the information required. The Greek word for *truth* is a-lethe-ia meaning
*un-forgetfulness”* or *un-concealment”* is more in keeping with the act of
remembering rather than apodeictic revelation. In keeping with the primitive
penchant for personification such nonsense was reified in the form of a new
godlet. Indeed how COULD it BE a revelation if what it *revealed* was something
we already knew?

Thus such words are redundant and unfit for the purpose of any intelligent
discussion as you have tactically already admitted as engendering obfuscation
and observation which I am in TOTAL AGREEMENT with you and a theme upon which
I have been bringing to the attention of this list for many years.

Even Old Norse or some other Germanic tongue would be better fitted to
communicate the subtleties of philosophical discussion rather than the crudities
of ancient Greek wherein the etymology of its abstractions are to be found in
such fairytales which river one chose to drink from. For the primitive Greeks,
drinking from the river Lethe (”forgetfulness” or “oblivion”) caused
complete forgetfulness, whilst those who drank from the river Mnemosyne [also
personified as a buxom wench] would remember everything and attain omniscience. If
they knew this then why the hell didn’t they organise chains of slaves with
buckets to fetch the magic Mnemosyne-water to Athens? They could have bottled
Mnemosyne’s urine and flooded the Mediterranean market with the stuff. It
would have made life much easier for old guys like me, who have a great
difficulty remembering all the kids’ birthdays, never mind the name of the deputy
president of the United States.

I must try to cut down on that Mersey-water it’s the colour of gnat’s piss -
but it goes so well with my Irish Whiskey.

Regards,

Jud
Personal Website: http://evans-experientialism.freewebspac…

“In nuclear war all men are cremated equal.”
Dexter Gordon

Posted on Sunday, September 9th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
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