why it appeals to me to write in a mode thatmight appear fr…
December 18th, 2006, search relatedRelated posts :: why it appeals to me to write in a mode thatmight appear frivo :: why it appeals to me to write in a mode that might appear frivolous or ignorant, for Pete :: why it appeals to me to write in a mode thatmight appear frivolous or ignorant, for Pete :: why it appeals to me to write in a mode thatmight appear fr…
Allen,
I have been thinking about what you were saying. I guess I only have a vague
sense of your reaction having something to do with the way the word “self”
is used. I supposed if I were to say mention the “other” that would seem
more open to you. I don’t know. When a psychologist says that which Bernard
is saying they mean to read all of philosophy and all of philosophers as
engaged in a pathological direction and they don’t mean the word
“pathology” in Kant’s sense as refering to the empirical influence of the
will. This criticism is a common one. I first came across it in Derrida who
applies it to his critical reading of Hegel’s dialectic. I reacted to it and
this made me a better and more traditional philosopher.
Whether one is speaking of Aristotle’s idea that the best thing is to become
more like the self-mover or Heidegger’s notion of Dasein coming to its
ownmost possibility or Hegel’s being-for-self there is always a narrowing
contraction in question, a limitation that defines an ongoing point of
departure l that one is always trying to remember even when it is impossible
to know. This is how a self or subjectivity comes to be which for a fairly
strict or traditional philosphers means attunement of the MYSTERY of… In
this case intentionality doesn’t have a specific object in mind but is
objectless as in the naked intentionality of the anonymous Cloud of
Unknowing.
Without these practices there is no participation in philosophy as we have
been talking about it for the last twenty five hundred years. To engage
philosophy in the above manners is to come to treat oneself as an end and
not as a means to an end and this gives us self-respect, self-confidence and
happiness. Spinoza talks the same language. It’s about a joy that you can
only get by being less moved by external causes. This is how he defines
power (the ability to be active) which Kant and Fichte will think as freedom
of the will.
Today “we” (I mean a sort of negative community of contemplatives) think of
this as a political-religious approach grounded in a liberal
Aristotlelian/Marxian tradition. My reading of Martha C. Nussbaum’s
Frontiers of Justice is helping me understand this better. I read her book
as compatible with a contemplative approach to philosophy just because the
emphasis is on treating others as end in themselves. But a person can’t do
this if first all he can’t treat himself as an end and not a useful means
towards an end. The difficulty here is that these practices brings us into
the experience of non-being and so cause anxiety. One experiences the
absence of relations found in solitude and silence, alienation and severe
forms of disabilities. We get to know what it means to be without a voice,
position, or point of view. But out of all this a deep sense of being
connected and belonging emerges. Like Jung says with the emergence of the
Self you get a kinship libido, a solidarity that is our fellow feeling. This
is joy that comes also with the ability to be more active. Activity and joy
go together in Spinoza. Nussbaum defines capabilities as “opportunities for
activity” (see pg74 of her book) which defines the dignity of the human
being. This is the starting point of her liberal politics in Marx’s 1844
Economic and Philosophical Manuscript.
Tympan
