self and other
June 23rd, 2007, search relatedRelated posts :: No related posts
In a message dated 23/06/2007 04:15:48 GMT Standard Time, _Bernx at aol.com_
(mailto:Bernx@aol.com) writes: In a message dated 6/22/2007 12:02:07 PM Eastern
Daylight Time, _artefact at t-online.de_ (mailto:artefact@t-online.de) writes:
Bernard:
The world as “other” indicates an identification of self with “this, that,
there”out there (in the world) but which in fact is but an empty abstraction..
It is more apparent that the malaise of chronic dasein attempts to manipulate
“the world” as an expression of the power complex of self but indicating the
total inferiority of self to (my) self and which is the only “other.” On the
other hand, in the polarity of God and world could also find the “other” as
God so that self and God are identified as one and the same. In either case
the self (being) in its daseinic desperation inflates itself (hybris) with
either God or World, Pappa Divine or Mamma Natura, and by which work on (my-self)
is precluded. I would thus generalize this as the fate of pre-psychological
man or otherwise as philosophical man for whom both God and World are sui
generis, and by which self is masked in its uniqueness: as myself in the here
and now rather than “out there” and dissolved in time. Sincerely; Bernard
Michael E:
Lord save us from such psychological constructs. What you propose is the
truly empty abstraction of “I = I”, the starting point of Fichtean philosophy.
But whereas Fichte is a thinker, a psychological thinking that criticizes
“mentalistic thinking” (BXB) ends only in mindless thinking. Already the deep
dialectic of Plato’s _Parmenides_ and _Sophitaes_ shows that self (_to auto_)
cannot be thought without the other (_to heteron_). But who today would bother
with such intricacy of thinking through the elementary categories from which
the world is made?
Only the uneducated thoughtlessly employ the term ‘abstraction’ polemically..
They presuppose all there is in its concrete richness, and thus take for
granted, as given, that which any philosophical thinking worth its salt first
has to think through — starting from scratch.
What you say doesn’t come even remotely close to engaging with Heidegger’s
phenomenology of selfhood and world in _Sein und Zeit_, GA24, 26, 27. Dear
Michael; You seem to have slipped your bolt too quickly and overlooked the fact
that I referred to “empty abstraction” rather than abstraction or the process
of abstraction per se. An empty abstraction is one without ground and which
William of Oakham early on warns about. And since concept formation is
dependant upon abstraction, a concept derived by “empty abstraction” suffers for the
neglect of the *pars pro toto* or *essere* in general shorn of the
particular.
Jud:
Gary Moore once wrote about *empty abstraction.*
*You cannot say that “function” does not change because “function” is, by
itself, an empty abstraction denoting the physical movement of the arrow. So,
just like the word “existence”, must relate, to be meaningful at all, to a
specific object. The word “functionality” is the height of empty abstraction,
it is the reification of a word. And if reified, then it would be ‘legitimate
’ to say “Functionality functions.*
In the above conversation on *function* [which might just as well have
referred to the abstraction *cognition* and of course the word *Being*] I
disagreed with Gary, in that for me all abstraction is empty and there is no
dichotomy betwixt *empty abstraction* and *contentful abstraction* and that all such
abstract nouns are reificational and fall within the same ontological
category and can be treated sententially by the same logical paradigm as I treated
the dreaded *Being* word yesterday, i. e:
Given the truth of the sentence: *Abstraction* or Empty Abstraction does not
exist,* ‘*Abstraction* or *Empty Abstraction* cannot be taken as naming
*Abstraction* or *Empty Abstraction* Since *Abstraction* or *Empty Abstraction*
has meaning, contributing as it does to the meaning of the true sentence,
*Abstraction* or *Empty Abstraction* and since*Abstraction* or *Empty
Abstraction* lacks a nominatum, the meaning of *Abstraction* or *Empty Abstraction* is
not realised by its reference: it retains a sense whether or not it has a
referent. So, with Lord Russell we may analyse *Abstraction* or *Empty
Abstraction* as:
‘It is not the case that there exists an x such that x is the *Abstraction*
or *Empty Abstraction* of Transcendental philosophy.’
What we have accomplished in fact is to treat the abstract nominal
*Abstraction* or *Empty Abstraction* as a predicate and read the negative general
existential claim as a denial that this predicate applies to anything.
Now, If any of you guys wish to reject the proposition: **Abstraction* or
Empty Abstraction does not exist,* and provide evidence that *Abstraction* or
*Empty Abstraction* actually exists, rather than it being no more than a
generational cognitive state of the neural networks of the abstractor - then the
floor is yours. Whilst you think through your answer and marshal and package
your proofs I will nip over to the tarmac at JFK and warm up the engines of the
SAS jet in order to waft you over the North Sea to Stockholm to pick up your
well-deserved *Nobel Prize for Philosophy* for proving the existence of the
non-existent.
Bernard:
That would be a high flown concept based on an “empty abstraction” such as
when you note: “Only the uneducated thoughtlessly employ the term ‘abstraction’
polemically.
Jud:
I wouldn’t bother your head about that one Bernard, for the one who is
using the word polemically is of course… wait for it… wait for it… why the
good Doctor Eldred himself, for to the educated the existence of
*abstraction* and its kissing cousin *empty abstraction* is a non-polemical,
non-controversial given. When the educated [another non-existent abstraction] points out
to the uneducated [another non-existent abstraction] that there is no such
thing as abstraction he is not entering into polemics neither is he employing
rhetoric - he is simply pointing out a fact to a cognitively weary
transcendental traveller trudging the along the wrong track who is neurologically
challenged in the ontological department and is desperately in need of some Good
Semanticist Samaritan whilst plodding along his reificational road to Geek
Gulch.
Dr. [something] Strangeabove:
They presuppose all there is in its concrete richness, and thus take for
granted, as given, that which any philosophical thinking worth its salt first
has to think through — starting from scratch”
Jud:
What *They* ACTUALLY claim is that the tradition’s view of concreticity is
attenuated by lack of basic nous, ill-informed and as passé as a condom
fashioned from the intestines of a pregnant pig. The *richness* which is generated
by the highly developed, ever-changing existential modal concreticities of
the human soma is precisely that which the ignorant, part-educated trannie
reifies into his pathetic abstract concreticities -YOU LOT ARE THE CONCRETISORS -
NOT THE ELIMINATIVIST.
For the eliminativist: [to copy a Jewish idiom] *all is concrete already*
there is NO NEED to lower or make a fool of oneself or insult the intelligence
of others as you do by deliberately existentialising that which is already
existent - i. e., the working human neurological network in its many modes and
falsely label what its intrinsic ideational generations and symbolic
communication and call it: *Abstraction* or *Empty Abstraction, * which, has
sentential meaning, but has no material buoy to which to tether the ghostly bark of
*Being,* and merely instantiates the empty void within the skull where
common-sense is usually ensconced.
Bernard:
I needn’t review the emptiness of that statement and how you invented your
particulars (e. g., my use of the term abstraction as polemical) to frame your
concept of myself as “uneducated.” Apparently you have a chip on your
shoulder with regard to “abstaktion.” Why is that? Perhaps it is because you are
indiscriminately influenced by an unmigated culture background,
Jud:
Living in Germany appears to have this effect in areas that call for
philosophical, and political acumen, vide: Hegel, Heidegger, Hitler, Honecker and
Himmler. Bernard: Accordingly, I must get down to the nitty gritty of this
(your) problem by–Heavens forbid–lapsing “psychological.”
Jud:
Oh NO! Not bloody Jung again!!!! 
Bernard:
The following is something I said on a psychoanalytical forum that may add
some color to the use of the word abstraction: I noted: “Jung, in his
*Psychological Types* drew this from Wilhelm Worringer’s *Abstraktion und Einfuhlung*
‘by which abstraction is corelated with the monistic tendency as intoverted
because “it presupposes a certain living and operating force on the part of
the object; hence it seeks to remove itself from the object’s influence.
Jud:
The above is just a long-winded plagiaristic version of a one-liner which
can be found in most dictionaries. Why would someone whose doctrine held that
reality consists of a single basic substance or element, be given over to
examining his/her own sensory and perceptual experiences any more than somebody
whose doctrine held that reality consists of a many substances or elements?
Where is his evidence [not anecdotal fantasy] for this crackpot assertion?
Surely ALL humankind, whether they are Catholics, Alien Visitor nuts,
Heideggerians, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses or Bush Baptists review their own sensory
and perceptual experiences. If they didn’t they probably wouldn’t survive more
than the age of three and would have fallen off a cliff, drunk bleach, or got
run over by a truck years ago?
Bernard:
Thus the abstracting attitude is centripetal, i. e., introverted.
Jud:
I agree but NOT for the same reasons that the nutty Jung espoused - but for
the common-sense reasons you may care to extrapolate from the sentence of mine
above. In other words BASICALLY this is done IN ORDER TO SURVIVE.
Bernard:
Worringer’s concept of abstraction, therefore, corresponds with the
introverted attitude. It is significant Worringer describes the influence of the
object in terms of fear and dread.’ (*Psych. Types* p. 362, original edition).
Jud:
In my experience only trannies fear ordinary objects. They wear *angst* like
some perverted badge of honour.
Bernard:
Apparently Worringer was versed in both Edmund Burke and Kant in their
distinctions between the beautiful and the sublime.
Jud:
The opinions of Edmund Burke and Kant in their distinctions between the
beautiful and the sublime are not worth a blast on a ragman’s trumpet. Such
opinion is subjective. Everyone differs in the appreciation of what is beautiful
and the sublime. A Hottentot ‘woman’s arse is considered beautiful to a
Hottentot man but utterly repulsive to a westerner and other Africans. A pistachio
ice cream may be sublime to one and be considered to look and taste like
creamed-frog-spawn to another. And what about the distinctions between the
beautiful and the sublime of Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer (May 21, 1960 – November 28,
1994) was an American serial killer. He murdered and gobbled up at least 17 men
and boys between 1978 and 199. Dahmer though that the frozen limbs of his
murdered young men looked and tasted beautiful on his dinner plate - would Burke
or Kant think the mouthfuls of a similar juicy human steak equally
*sublime?*
Bernard:
But the pitch in terms of Worringer’s interpretation of European art history
is that the abstracting (introverted, monistic) attitude typifies Gothic or
Germanic art and architecture, and has this in common with the art, religion
and philosophies of the East.
Jud:
Europeans in general and Germans in particular were/are not at all monist.
They had enough gods peering from behind every treetrunk to man a
pursuit-posse to give chase after Jesse James, and there are more abstract nouns floating
around in European lexicons than you’ve had hot dinners. We are no more
introverted than the Japanese or the Outer Mongolians - if we weren’t we would
have been wiped out thousands of years ago. The angularity, sharp lineaments
and over-ornamentation married to curvilinear spans of Gothic art can be found
in many temples in Thailand and similar elements can be seen elsewhere in the
world. The type of building materials [malleability of stone etc.] available
often influences local architecture, as the writing materials (wooden sticks
and crude knife-cuts] of the early Scandinavians and Irish influenced their
alphabets as we discussed recently.
Bernard:
On the other hand, the empathic, or “feeling into” that typifies for
Worringer the Latinate and then Romanesque art is decidedly “naturalistic” and hence
extraverted in attitude and pluralstic (polytheistic) in demeanor.
Jud:
Pure guesswork and Unsinn. Who is to say that the architects of the soaring
triumphal architectural adventure that is Cologne Cathedral lacks any empathic
“feeling into” on the part of the architects and builders in their *hymn in
stone* to the glory of God? Is the breathtaking exquisiteness of Westminster
Abbey or the University buildings of Oxford or Cambridge the work of artist
builders bereft of feeling for the heavenly creations? best place for
Worringer? Pitch him in the dustbin marked: *embarrassing nutty forebears* - before
his crackpot pronouncements and wild claims cause you more embarrassments.
Bernard:
This holds to this day in the Italian necessity for *la bella figura* or
*bella persona,* *i vestute e tutto! Where the object is magical and threatening
for the intoverted and abstracting attitude, for the feeling into (empathic,
extraverted) attitude the person(a) is matter of fact.
Jud:
It doesn’t seem to frighten them from pinching the *la bella figura* of any
*belle laide’s* arse within reach? The concept of magical and threatening
objects is no doubt caused by the presence of the suspended representations
of bodies of partly-clothed Saviors with bleeding hearts and spears shoved in
the ribs which hang from every street-corner and country road shrine? Still
it didn’t stop the *begli aviatori italiani* from jumping in their flying
objects and bombing and machine-gunning the shit out of hordes of defenceless
fuzzy-wuzzies, many of whom were armed with primitive weapons such as spears,
clitorectomy knives and bows and arrows in Ethiopia did it? Nor did they
appear to be afraid of those primitive fighting-objects - but maybe that was
because they were 500 feet below?
Bernard: {disinterring the nazi corpse once again]
Jung apparently favoured the abstracting, monistic. introverted attitude
insofar as he himself was a colossal extravert in his earlier professional years
as Freud’s “Crown prince” but finally broke through to.
Jud:
By all accounts raising his introverted and unconscious side into his
conscious personality was not all that he elevated - he was known to raise his arm
in the nazi salute upon occasion too wasn’t he? Why are Nazis so popular on
this list?
Bernard: Jung, of course, was not Swiss but from a family background of
German Catholics.
Jud:
That is why he was twisted like Heidegger and Hitler.
Bernard:
He was, by opting for an introverted attitude also recapitulating the lost
ground in his orginal Germanic nature.
Jud:
You mean he was deprived of sauerkraut and Jew-hatred as a kid? Lucky boy!
Bernard:
In this sense as he got older he wandered more from empirical necessities
and became more abstractly concerned with German alchemy, especially that of
Gehard Dorn and Paracelsus.
Jud:
He wandered a bit in the *skirt department* too from I have read of him in
my *The World’s Worst Thinkers* book.
Bernard:
Worringer was thus not off the mark when he noted how the (introverted)
abstracting attitude had a magical relation to the object, More alarming,
however, is how Worringer analytically coined the German abstracting attitude and
for whom the Jews later became their dreaded (magical) object.
Jud:
There was nothing *magical* about the Jews as far as the Germans where
concerned. The Jews ran rings around them intellectually, commercially and
hard-work wise. That is why the dumme Lümmel finally turned to people like Heidegger
and Hitler. [apart from traitorous shag-happy floozies like the nazi-loving
Arendt of course.)
But Jewish traitors to their families, religion, people, culture and race
can still be found who lick nazi ass - as we all know.
Bernard”
(the above was taken from the psychoanalytic forum “Free Associations” and
addressed in a dialogue with David Barrett of London,
Jud:
I’ll bet your sorry you wrote it now? Things have an unpleasant habit
of coming back to haunt you don’t they?
Regards,
Jud Evans.
Personal Website. _http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/index.htm_
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspac…)
