What is Husserlian Phenomenology?

Discussion in 'Religion & Philosophy' started by Kyklos, Jul 22, 2018.

  1. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    -Post # 124: Appendix begins A1 to A3
    -125, Appendix A4 to A7

    -126, Appendix A8

    Appendix A8


    "Despair is suffering without meaning"-Victor Frankl

    (∀x)[Dx ⊃ (Sx * ~Mx)]



    “The secret of Kant’s philosophy is the unthinkability of despair.”-- Theodor Adorno



    It is as if Dr. Frankl gave this interview yesterday. Frankl knew his chances of surviving the Nazi Death Camps were statistically 1 in 29.


    Victor Frankl: Finding meaning in difficult times:

     
  2. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    -Post # 124: Appendix begins A1 to A3
    -125, Appendix A4 to A7
    -126, Appendix A8

    -127, Appendix B, B1

    Appendix B
    B1

    Husserlian Phenomenology: The Possibility of the Science of Essences


    For an in-depth and technical explanation of Edumond’s Husserl’s phenomenological methodology, see Dr. Mark Thorsby’s lectures. Thorsby goes through Husserl's introduction to phenomenology in "Ideas" (pdf) section by section. In "Ideas " (section, 19, or pdf., p. 29) Husserl gives a powerful critique of naturalistic empirical positivistic methodology and its assumptions (Naturalistic Misinterpretations video @ 11 min. 43). He presents a good summary to the different types of phenomenologies. I have attended course lectures by Phenomenologist, Dr. Jitendra Mohanty, on Husserl’s critique of psychologism and the epistemological problems of naturalistic scientific empiricism. Dr. Thorsby gives an excellent lecture on this fundamental issue underlying all cognitive science, logic, and mathematics (Part II). Also, he teaches a complete symbolic logic course in another series of free videos on his channel.

    Phenomenology is the most radical form of empiricism for it describes the living stream of experience in meaning-reality; however, no pure phenomenological description is possible.

    Mark Thorsby: Part I on Phenomenology: Types of phenomenology.

    1. Transcendental Constitutive Phenomenology: studies how objects are constituted in pure or transcendental consciousness.

    2. Naturalistic Constitutive Phenomenology: how consciousness takes in the world of nature.

    3. Existential Phenomenology: studies concrete human existence.

    4. Generative Historicist Phenomenology: studies how meaning is generated in historical processes of collective experience over time.

    5. Genetic Phenomenology: studies the genesis of meanings of things.

    6. Hermeneutic Phenomenology: studies interpretive structures of experience.

    7. Realistic Phenomenology: studies the structure of consciousness, assuming a real world.




     
  3. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    -Post # 124: Appendix begins A1 to A3
    -125, Appendix A4 to A7
    -126, Appendix A8
    -127, Appendix B, B1

    -128, Appendix B, B2
    Appendix B2

    Don’t forget about the Good Professor, Dr. John Vervaeke! I watch all of his videos. His monthly Question and Answer session for April, 17, 2020 is particularly good because it succinctly contains much of the content of his lectures and discussions during the last few months.

    Each video lecture gets clearer and more concise on the themes of idolatrous objectification, self -deception, consciousness, paradigm entropy, the Logos, phenomenological existentialism, Kairos, Wisdom, dialectical meaning epistemology, Being Modes, and Mythic-Poetic thinking.

    I go crazy with excitement whenever he mentions Paul Tillich because his systematic theology unifies all those philosophical methodologies that we have been studying. Dr. Vervaeke incorporates the methodologies of Dialectics (Heteronomy vs. Autonomy), Critical Science (Kantian Criticism), and phenomenology (Heidegger, Tillich) in his scientific studies that require clear expression and terms. The professor's working vocabulary reminds me of the careful use of language by Husserl in his 1913 book introducing phenomenology, Ideas (pdf).
     
  4. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    -Post # 124: Appendix begins A1 to A3
    -125, Appendix A4 to A7
    -126, Appendix A8
    -127, Appendix B, B1
    -128, Appendix B, B2
    -129, Appendix B, B3, B4


    Appendix B3

    Dr. Cornel West On Being A Revolutionary Christian

    April 23, 2020



    Appendix B4

    The Philosopher’s Stone

    Dr. John Vervaeke discusses Carl Jung with cognitive scientists and practicing psychotherapist Anderson Todd who also teaches courses at the University of Toronto.

    Speaking of synchronicity….

    Todd demonstrates the use of all three methodologies of dialectical reasoning, critical philosophy, and phenomenology while discussing Jung and other philosophers. In addition, he integrates historical empirical research of past proto-cognitive science and classic philosophy. In other words, Anderson Todd is way ahead working on rich philosophical grounds.

    I first encountered this concept of synchronicity in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment as ‘coincidence,’ and never seriously researched the concept further. Todd has an insightful and plausible interpretation of synchronicity. Synchronicity could also be understood as an experience of paradigmatic induction: the formation, or re-enforcing, or a weakening re-interpretation (thus inducted) of an ontological paradigm. Reason always demands coherence and completeness. A ‘coincidence’ is remembered and highly selective, but not meaningless. Coincidence can be a metaphor for transcendence. Is this a paradigmatic circularity any rational person can escape?

    Also, I wondered why Isaac Newton spent many years experimenting with alchemy: he was not a gold speculator, but searching for something more valuable—the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life. Rarely, is this side of Newton discussed. The alchemist is experimentally applying the categories of reason (Spirit) to matter, and attempting the reverse.

    I am still holding on to the concept of telos, as “ethical telos,” or the “telos for the divine double,” seeking relevance realization, and transformative experience, which is compatible with historical telos, but not the Cold War trope of deterministic historical teleology.


     
  5. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    -Post # 124: Appendix begins A1 to A3
    -125, Appendix A4 to A7
    -126, Appendix A8
    -127, Appendix B, B1
    -128, Appendix B, B2
    -129, Appendix B, B3, B4

    -130, Appendix B5

    Appendix B5

    The Book People




    That ending scene from Fahrenheit 451 is so frightening, and so beautiful.

    Eventually, I will link up each appendix to a specific topic in this strange collection of essays. And I wrote them: you can see all the spelling errors as evidence!

    Contemporary books on phenomenology are expensive, and so most of my studies focus on primary sources, free online libraries, and my own small book collection. I have found YouTube's online lecture series freely contributed by scholars, universities (St. John’s College Nottingham, NYC Union Theological Seminary, Goethe-Institute), and philosophers to be very good quality.

    There are online lectures on Husserl, and Heidegger given by some of the scholar mentioned already in the other appendixes: Dr. John Veraeke, Dr. Gregory B. Sadler (finally made it to Lordship and Bondage in Phenomenology of Spirit), Dr. Mark Thorsby (also teaches from the primary texts of Husserl and Heidegger with expert commentary), and Dr. Johannes A. Niederhauser.

    Since contemporary books on Heidegger are so expensive, and I don’t read the German language, my knowledge of the later Heidegger is relatively weak. Dr. Johannes A. Niederhauser insightfully speaks in the language of the later Heidegger and is particularly helpful explaining his further philosophical development. Heidegger’s complete writings are massive in volume.

    Lecturer Eric Sean Nelson, formerly at University of Massachusetts Lowell before locating to China, gives a lecture on the later Heidegger and his studies of non-Western religions. Paul Tillich also was doing the same type of exploration of other religions during the 1950s meeting with Daisetz Suzuki and Shin’ichi Hisamatsu to discuss Japanese Buddhism in New York, and Kyoto, Japan at various times (Cambridge Companion to Paul Tillich, p. 254)(pdf).

    The later Heidegger thought philosophy should be replaced by discourse. The Ancient Greeks had no word for language, but instead used the term "διάλογ-ος “ meaning “dialogue,” “conversation,” “debate,” or “argument.”

    Philosopher Hannah Arendt was alive when phenomenology became a philosophical school of thought, and commented that it was “a time when talking became alive.” I think I know what she meant.

    This lecture by Eric S. Nelson ends at 54 minutes, but the question answer period is excellent also.

    Husserl and Heidegger: Phenomenology, Eurocentrism, and Buddhism
     
    Last edited: May 10, 2020
  6. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    -Post # 124: Appendix begins A1 to A3
    -125, Appendix A4 to A7
    -126, Appendix A8
    -127, Appendix B, B1
    -128, Appendix B, B2
    -129, Appendix B, B3, B4
    -130, Appendix B5
    -131,Appendix B6

    I have posted my collection of essays at Strange Phenomenon so that I can edit them.


    Appendix B6

    The Swimmer (1968 )
    (Full movie)

    The moral of the film is complete self-deception destroys the concept of Truth itself.

    This very literary story was first written by John Cheever as a short story appearing in the The New Yorker magazine in 1964.

    “The Swimmer” is about self-deception in American society during the heyday of capitalist growth and the extreme optimism that characterized the American mind. This frame of mind, or the shape of consciousness, in this era of suburban expansion and post-War II domination of the world economy was the Neo-liberal free market ideology beginning to emerge as unquestioned conventional knowledge.

    We can see today’s corporate culture, which I have experienced, as motivational positive thinking pop psychology to manipulate people into conformity and to enforce ideological harmony masked by a cheerful fake veneer. This unrealistic optimism is strongly pointed out in the film. However, this consciousness is complete self-deception and delusion. Corporate positive psychology instills a false enthusiasm and happy conformity that denies truth itself not unlike Chinese Maoist revolutionary joyful extremists. Notice the excessive smiling of the characters, which we see in North Korea. Excessive smiling has even become a syndrome for some Japanese businessmen. Face crimes are serious in authoritarian environments. Ned Merrill, the movie’s protagonist, is a wealthy, middle-aged advertising man trying to “swim” to his home in suburban Connecticut by skipping to his wealthy neighbors’ swimming pools along the way while ignoring the truth exposing his delusions and unconscious lies with his socialite friends, and ultimately with the film viewers. Ned lives a life of complete contradiction. Listen carefully to the dialogue, as the truth will sometimes slip out.

    Most people have heard of Hegel’s famous “Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis” dialectical tirade of thought and historical change, but what is often not mentioned is that the suffering of self-delusion, or illusion of consciousness struggling with itself, is a central concept of Hegel’s historical account of the evolution of consciousness in time. This agony and spiritual internal violence is a central concept of Hegel’s historical account of the evolution of consciousness in time. Self-deception is easy to embrace because of our desires, but a difficult state of mind to escape. Both Ned, and the film viewers will reach what is known in Hegel’s thought as emerging self-consciousness at the end of Ned’s journey of untruth to truth.

    This is not a true story, but as myth it is the truest story.

    I chose “The Swimmer” for review because of the current pandemic, but also this film as been interpreted by some as a critique of “postmodernism” which it clearly is not, but rather about the individualist social paradigm in American capitalist society. Some of the postmodern interpretations make many of the same conceptual errors and fallacies identified in my last polemical essay titled, “The Ayn Randian Propagandistic Trope Concerning Postmodernism.”
     
    Last edited: May 24, 2020
  7. Adorno

    Adorno Active Member

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    This is such a rich and thought-provoking thread - a real treasure (perhaps the best thread on the entire site). There is so much here to unpack, to interrogate, to explore...and yet, there is seemingly little interest from other forum members (certainly not the attention this thread demands). Sigh. To invoke Aldous Huxley over Orwell (and Bradbury), the biggest threat is not the fascists who will burn the challenging books, it's that there will be no one left who wants to read them. Kyklos, your work in bringing these ideas to light is a breath of fresh air - every word you write is an act of revolt against ignorance. Kudos.
     
    Last edited: May 25, 2020
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  8. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    Thank you Adorno for your encouragement from the beginning.

    There is interest at this blog from a small group here and at Strange Phenomenon which shows readers from the Ukraine, Spain, Portugal, Germany, France, Russia, Singapore, Canada, and South Korea. Not a great number of people visit, but the right persons, like yourself. I still have to attach my appendixes to the relevant essays. I have been re-reading Phenomenology of Spirit, Being and Time, and Husserl's Ideas. Strangely, reading those old books they become immediately relevant.
     
    Last edited: May 25, 2020
  9. Adorno

    Adorno Active Member

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    Hegel, Heidegger, and Husserl? At the same time? That's some serious heavy lifting. I always marvel at the depth of Hegel's thought - every time I re-read the Phenomenology I find something new that makes rethink my earlier interpretation. Sheer brilliance. By the way, I know you mentioned Max Scheler's work in one of your posts, but are you planning to examine Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values? If so, I very much look forward to hearing your thoughts.

    As for Heidegger, I am always intrigued by just how much of his thought influences Marcuse's work - even beyond his obvious influence on the early Marcuse (and in spite of Marcuse's later justified evisceration of him). Re-reading One Dimensional Man after Being and Time is eye opening, especially in the digital age. Dasein indeed.

    It's good to see that your work is generating interest from diverse areas. Truly the world of ideas still resonates in some. I still believe in the emancipatory nature of reason (even if it's a hope without optimism). The Socratic impulse carries on. Or to put it another way, "Philosophy, which once seemed obsolete, lives on because the moment to realize it was missed."
     
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  10. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    I am not going to say I understand it all. However, now that I am older, it makes a lot more sense than the first time reading Hegel, Heidegger, and Husserl. Husserl is the most difficult. None of these philosophers will make any sense if the context of the philosophical issues they address, and conclusions they provided are not known beforehand. It would be like trying to reconstruct a complex conversation between two persons on a phone call, but only hearing one speaker.

    Husserl explains and demonstrates the phenomenological method in his book, Ideas. Husserl is the most difficult to read of the three. Heidegger is relatively easier to read. Both Husserl and Heidegger use the language of Hegel to describe mental processes and dialectical movement. I once took a graduate level course on Hegel taught by Dr. David Carr-- and after checking my class notes--we skipped through the entire “The Phenomenology of Spirit” (1807) in a semester. There were only about 15 students in the class. Dr. Carr is best known for translating Edmond Husserl’s “The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology.” Currently, I am reading along with Dr. Sadler’s online course on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. See lecture: The Complete Phenomenology of Spirit (Preface, section 2) by Professor Gregory B Sadler. He is really good on Hegel, and other lectures. I am at paragraph 240. He will be reading the section on religion in the near future.

    I mentioned Max Scheler because he had a very interesting understanding of the phenomenological “epoche” as a religious attitude. That was a real discovery writing these essays. Also, Scheler was the first official representative of the sociology of knowledge. I heard about this ethics and that Pope John Paul II studied Scheler’s ethics resulting in his dissertation titled "Reevaluation of the possibility of founding a Catholic ethic on the ethical system of Max Scheler.“ [3]

    My view on ethics and religion is similar to Schleiermacher and Tillich. Schleiermacher believes that Christianity “brings nothing entirely new, or alien into the domain of Ethics…rather supplements the general principles of all morality”(Munro, 257)(pdf). Both philosophical ethics and Christian ethics have the same content, but in a different form. Philosophical ethics emerges from the moral reasoning of humans in relation to “the race.” Schleiermacher means by “race,” the Human Race.

    Tillich tells this story of religion looking for a home in ethics, epistemology, and art. Religion had no place to go as society became more secular. Religion asked to stay with ethics, but only on a temporary basis, and eventually had to leave because of it behavior. Next, religion went to epistemology, which was intrigued with Gnosis, but scientific empiricism caused it to lose interest, and religion slowly left on its own. Then religion when to Art to stay, and they were very welcoming saying that both art and religion were striving for a common creative transcendence. However, art wanted to be a religion also. Religion could not accept this identification as a religion, and moved on. Tillich does not believe the concept of religion can be reduced to a function.

    I agree with Sartre who wrote, “Ethics is both impossible and necessary.” To be ethical requires the same kind of faith as to be religious—but one cannot be reduced to the other.

    The personal and philosophical relationship between Marcuse and Heidegger did not work out. Marcuse was the last classic orthodox Left Hegelian Marxist—the last person who really understood Hegel.
     
  11. Adorno

    Adorno Active Member

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    As I understand Schleiermacher, he seems to invoke Spinoza (emphasizing the relationship of parts to the whole) through a Kantian lens: apprehension of the "one and all" (intuition) is a mode of seeing the world (or standing in relation to the world) in which the communally informed forms of subjectivity (concepts, language, norms, etc.) manifest themselves. Religion and ethics would then be doctrinal approaches to universalize what is essentially subjective. Hence, Schleiermacher resists the "view from nowhere" approach of such overarching narratives for the same reason that Kant limits knowledge to the phenomenal - one cannot stand outside of one's own subjectivity; that is, one cannot grasp the noumenal - it is always mediated through intuition and schemata. In Schleiermacher's case this leads to a religious pluralism that suggests that all religious relationships are subjectively mediated - just as knowledge is for Kant. In Kant's thought this defines the limits of knowledge (with an eye to establishing the foundation of human freedom); in Schleiermacher it re-enchants Nature (in order to ensconce human freedom within the natural - the relation of the unique, situated, contingent individual related to the boundlessness of Nature) - in this way, Schleiermacher engages the 3rd Critique by understanding subjective agency within the aesthetic experience of nature - existential reflections on creative passionate responses to (and meaningful interpretations of) divine reality disclosed through unique relationships defined by (fragmentary) varied experiences. This is a thematic variation to Kant's attempt to harmonize moral agency with sensuous nature in the Critique of Judgment. Kant's embodiment of respect in his "kingdom of ends" becomes the celebration of fellowship within the religious community (a new sense of home to overcome alienation from nature and others). Kant's call for political cosmopolitanism becomes, under Schleiermacher, a championing of religious pluralism.

    Tillich, of course, is a giant. The fact that he supervised Adorno's habilitation thesis on Kierkegaard is remarkable. Tillich's critique of dogmatism certainly invokes the spirit of Schleiermacher but the fact that this did not subsume him under an ethical relativism is instructive - as is Adorno's eulogy "His open-mindedness did not prevent him from drawing the necessary conclusions when what was at stake was the need to show whether or not he was a decent human being. And in that particular historical context, the plain statement that a person is a decent human being gains an emphasis that it perhaps does not otherwise possess." (see Peter Gordon's Adorno and Existence, pg 19) Those words are haunting; they resonate as much today as then. The remarkableness of human decency is an indictment of the age.

    As for Marcuse, certainly the relationship with Heidegger was not long lived. By the time Marcuse writes Reason and Revolution (1941) he has given up the attempt to formulate an explicit Heideggerian Marxism. That being said, there are latent Heideggerian influences in Marcuse's thought, particularly in his critique of scientific/technological rationalism and analytic philosophy (even formal logic) in One Dimensional Man. I'm not sure I would go so far as to suggest that Marcuse is the last person who really understood Hegel (I think there are some really good Hegelian philosophers in the last 40 years - particularly Axel Honneth); however, I do understand the sentiment - Marcuse's Hegelian thought in redemptive in the strongest sense of the word.
     
    Last edited: May 30, 2020
  12. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    That's really good. I'll going to keep this really clean summary of Schleiermacher, Kant, Tillich, and Heidegger. Schleiermacher was not impressed with Kant's Categories. I haven't researched it further:however, I was impressed by the categories. Schleiermacher is strong on Kantian epistemology which attracts my the most. Marcuse turned away from Heidegger and assimilated Freud instead (Eros and Civilization). Marcuse really makes a mistake attacking analytic philosophy as embodied by Wittgenstein. Marcuse was right to criticized analytic philosophy, but he failed to note that there were two Wittgenstein(s): the first as in the Tractatus, and the later Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein would have rejected analytic philosophy also as it was practiced just as he rejected the Vienna School of Logical Positivism founded in his honor. So reading Marcuse harmed my understand of Wittgenstein for a long time. Thank you for the Adorno quote on Tillich. I know, I exaggerated about Marcuse on Hegel. Reading One Dimensional Man for the first time blew my mind. I was determined to learn how to think like he wrote. Ultimately, Marcuse believed that phenomenology was inherently authoritarian because it posited eternal essences. The same could be said of Plato's ideal forms, or all types of objective idealism--even Hegelian Absolute Idealism. And I guess we could include Christianity's Platonic influence. All doctrines of salvation lead to elitism.
     
  13. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    I should mention that this thread and edited version (very minor changes) at Strange Phenomenon are not copyrighted and you are free to use it . However, a person cannot claim it is one's own authorship even if not copyrighted.
     
  14. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    I don't like to change these posts once published, but there were some thoughts that I must add. The sections changed or added are in blue.
     
  15. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    Rev. Dr. William Barber II is hopeful a ‘major moral revival and revolution’ will defeat Trump: ‘Thank God it is happening’

    -Rev. Barber's new book, “We Are Called to Be a Movement.”
    -
    Podcast Interview with Rev. Barber.
     
    Last edited: Jun 19, 2020
  16. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    -Post # 124: Appendix begins A1 to A3
    -125, Appendix A4 to A7
    -126, Appendix A8
    -127, Appendix B, B1
    -128, Appendix B, B2
    -129, Appendix B, B3, B4
    -130, Appendix B5
    -131, Appendix B6

    -141-142, Appendix C

    An Existentialist Interpretation of the Last Scene of Fellini’s Film, “La Dolce Vita,” (“The Sweet Life”)(1960)



    “It’s a monster! It’s been dead for three days!”—Partygoers shout after discovering a giant bloated stingray fish on a beach.


    The dead stingray represents spiritual death, nihilism, alienation, and the state of falleness of a particular state of human consciousness. There are other terms of this mode of human existence the Existentialist philosophers use to describe this shape of consciousness such as the “they,” or “Das Man,” (The ‘averageman’) and as “inauthentic existence.” All these words attempt to name a form of personal consciousness that is not “owned” by itself, but lacking self-responsibility while self-deceptively seeking refuge from the anxious uncertainty characteristic of human freedom in its struggle for complete self-actualization. All of these phenomenological concepts are very abstract and material examples, which this film provides, are very helpful for giving them intelligible content. “Phenomenology” is the science of appearances, or φαινόμενον, the Greek term for “phenomenon” meaning to bring to light, make to appear, to show, combined with λόγος, ”logos” of which one of its meanings is study “of the subject,” as in “anthrop-ology.”

    I have written about Heidegger’s philosophy before in a more formal way in the essay, Dasein Analytic.” Writing about authentic and unauthentic Being requires a different kind of thinking that is richly expressive, which can put living flesh back onto these abstract reductionist concepts that attempt to illuminate the essential structures of human existence. Fellini’s film makes this kind of analysis much easier, fun, and even more relevant.

    The film’s main character, Marcello Rubini, is a writer for Italian gossip magazines during the 1960s and is gradually pulled into, but also attracted to, the “sweet life” (“dolce vita”) of wealthy high society circles in Rome. This being one of Fellini’s most famous films, La Dolce Vita, is divided into seven episodes each tracing Marcello’s desperate effort to escape himself ending in the last scene on an Italian beach where he is on the verge of having insight into his own existence. Marcello represents a necessary and essential existential stage of human ‘mind,’ or ‘spirit’ (the German term ‘Geist’ has both meanings) that suffers from the anxiety of human existence. In an effort to escape, he embraces pleasure as an end in itself. Hegel quotes Goethe’s play “Faust” to describe this individualistic hedonistic consciousness aimed at fulfillment of desire as its only purpose in the Phenomenology of Spirit (paragraph 360):

    “Instead of the seemingly heavenly spirit of the universality of knowing and doing in which the feeling and the gratification of singular individuality fall silent, the spirit of the earth has entered into it, a spirit to whom the only being which counts as the true actuality is that of the actuality of singular consciousness.

    It despises intellect and science
    Man’s highest gifts –
    It has given itself over to the devil,
    And must perish”

    A stingray is sometimes called a devil fish. For Heidegger, the character of Marcello would epitomize the average man, or the public “they” of all other human beings. In, Being and Time (1927)(pdf.), Heidegger wrote, “The ‘they’ has its own ways in which to be. That tendency… is grounded in the fact that Being-with-one-another concerns itself as such with averageness, which is an existential characteristic of the ‘they’ (Being and Time, p.164).” Heidegger’s phenomenological analysis of consciousness characterized this hedonistic mind—the spirit of the earth--as the self that allows the average-everydayness of an anonymous public “they” to prescribe “…one's state-of-mind, and determines what and how one 'sees' (Ibid., p. 213).” The concept of “seeing” plays an essential part of the person given over to endless hedonistic search for pleasure in the forms of spectacle, and novelty to achieve some sense of a substantial life; a world in which the subject (person) takes for granted they belong and are freely a part of that world.

    Curiosity, Looking, and Seeing of the “They”

    “Even at an early date (and in Greek philosophy this was no accident) cognition was conceived in terms of the 'desire to see’.”--(Being and Time, p. 214)

    Heidegger uses other words for special kinds of sight or seeing using his clever etymological kinship studies such as 'Umsicht' meaning “circumspection” for example (Ibid., p.159, Footnote 3). Sight (‘Sicht’) is the ability to see, or vision. On the other hand, seeing (‘Sehen’) is the ability to comprehend, recognize, and understand what is seen. In the English language, sight without seeing can mean, “looking” as when one says, “I am looking for the beacon, but do not see it!” or “I saw him, but did not recognize my old friend.”

    These distinctions are important for understanding the particular way that the hedonistic self continually seeks seeing, but without comprehension. This particular “I” consciousness relates itself to the world in a mode of Being called “curiosity.” Heidegger describes this comportment of inauthentic human existence:

    “The basic state of sight shows itself in a peculiar tendency-of-Being which belongs to everydayness-the tendency towards 'seeing'. We designate this tendency by the term "curiosity" [Neugier], which characteristically is not confined to seeing, but expresses the tendency towards a peculiar way of letting the world be encountered by us in perception (Ibid., p. 214).”

    Historically, science is understood as having its genesis in the desire to see, but within inauthentic Being consciousness distracts itself from the issues of its own existential meaning. Seeing is a release from anxiety for inauthentic Being, but it fails to have understanding and comprehension for the person is only seeking sensation, or merely engaged in voyeurism. Voyeurism is one way consciousness abandons the world by superficially embracing the world.

    “When curiosity has become free, however, it concerns itself with seeing, not in order to understand what is seen (that is, to come into a Being towards it) but just in order to see. It seeks novelty only in order to leap from it anew to another novelty. In this kind of seeing, that which is an issue for care does not lie in grasping something and being knowingly in the truth; it lies rather in its possibilities of abandoning itself to the world (Ibid., p. 216).”

    This kind of seeing is only one form of an idolatry of perception; another being natural-scientific reductionist empiricism in which perception is assumed to be immaculate, or received as purely objective without acknowledging the shaping influence the grasp of consciousness has on our experience. This school of empiricism then attempts to use its credentials as science to become a philosophy of life leading to the violation of human values with disastrous consequences.

    In this mode of Being existence is “ambiguous” making it “…impossible to decide what is disclosed in a genuine understanding, and what is not (Ibid., p. 217)." Ambiguity is the inability of the self to distinguish between the authentic and unauthentic, between the substantial and unsubstantial in one’s own life, Others, and the world. Ambiguity is ignorance that signifies modal confusion. Like the dead devil fish monster on the beach, Marcello can look, but he cannot see.

    Chatter and Idle talk

    Heidegger describes as inauthentic the hedonistic individual consciousness oriented toward pleasure, superficial seeing; insincere averageness lacking depth; and endless curiosity that divides itself into infinite individual moments in which the fractured self loses its identity. These attributes are named “existentials,” and refer exclusively to the essential structures of human existence, and not to objects. Heidegger adds yet another existential,” named, “chatter” as a particular degenerated form of human discourse that has no understanding, and is just “Idle talk” based on conventional uncritical opinions functioning as yet another escape mechanism to avoid thinking, risk, and responsibility. Chatter filibusters any real commitment to a meaningful life such as this gossip columnist’s endlessly journey skipping from disconnected media event to media event:

    “Idle talk is the possibility of understanding everything without previously making the thing one's own. … Idle talk is something which anyone can rake up; it not only releases one from the task of genuinely understanding, but develops an undifferentiated kind of intelligibility, for which nothing is closed off any longer…idle talk discourages any new inquiry and any disputation, and in a peculiar way suppresses them and holds them back (Ibid., p. 213)."

    ...continues to post #142.
     
  17. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    -Post # 124: Appendix begins A1 to A3
    -125, Appendix A4 to A7
    -126, Appendix A8
    -127, Appendix B, B1
    -128, Appendix B, B2
    -129, Appendix B, B3, B4
    -130, Appendix B5
    -131, Appendix B6
    -141-142, Appendix C


    The Second, “Second Coming”

    "The waking have one common world, but the sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own (idios kosmos)." "Hearing they do not understand, like the deaf. Of them does the saying bear witness: 'present, they are absent.’ “--Heraclitus


    For the Greek word “idios,” the term “idiot” is formed to mean a private “individual,” and “kosmos” meaning “cosmos” or “world.”

    Marcello and his party crowd stubble out of a beach house after enduring a boring night-long half-hearted orgy—I just hate those! They spill out into the beach parking lot and hear men calling out in surprise as they pull a giant string ray fish onto the shore. One fisherman suggested to the exhausted orgy partiers the fish could be sold for a large profit. This last scene’s “Second Coming” of the Devil Fish is as sarcastic as the first scene’s return of Jesus as archaic symbolism.

    At first, the party mistake the stingray dragged up in the fishermen’s net as being alive, but the fishermen knew it had been dead for three days. Dead for three days: Lent fasting is during the six weeks before Easter, after the Carnival orgy. This moment carries for Marcello only the possibility of insight into authentic existence.

    Marcello displays utter disgust and contempt for the alien creature which in turn encourages the others to mock the rotting inhuman corpse with its eyes wide open staring at the crowd; without any empathy, a smirking Marcello takes great pleasure speaking for the crowd declaring, “And it insists on looking.” Marcello is smirking at himself while summing up his own spiritually dead meaningless life.

    The hedonistic nihilist mode of Being, “…experiences the double meaning implicit in what it did, viz. when it took hold of life and possessed it; but in doing so it really laid hold of death.”--Phenomenology of Spirit, paragraph, 363.

    The hung-over and exhausted Marcello wanders to the side of the crowd, and as he sits down on the beach, he hears a voice calling; a voice in the distance across an estuary where a river divides the beach and pours out into the open ocean. But Marcello is unable to hear the young girl, or understand what she is trying to say to him as the ocean waves drown out her voice.

    For Marcello the “…pleasure enjoyed has indeed the positive significance that self-consciousness has become objective to itself, but equally it has the negative one of having reduced itself to a moment…its experience is of a contradiction in which the attained reality of its individuality sees itself destroyed by the negative essence confronting it, which is devoid of reality and content, and which yet is the power which destroys it…the poorest form of self-realizing Spirit….(Ibid., para: 363).”

    Marcello is kneeling on the beach facing the angelic young girl as she calls out to him. He does not recognize her as the young waitress named Paola he encountered in a seaside restaurant days earlier. Marcello was working on a book while Paola hummed along with the jukebox. Marcello told Paola she reminded him of an angel in an Umbrian painting. Painter Raphael is the most famous painter of the High Renaissance Umbrian School of Art. “Paola” (Pow-la) is the Italian and Spanish feminine form of the name “Paul” which in this context has a religious meaning pointing to the appearance of Christ symbolizing the Substantial Life.

    Scientific and unscientific symbolism shares a common ground in a wonderful synthesis of thought and existence, of Being and consciousness. The two different elements of Language that bears the power of logic, and Mythic-Symbols are unified by metaphor (Language and Myth, Ernst Cassirer, 1948 ). However, for Marcello all symbolism has lost meaning having been reduced to curious isolated images, and odd trinkets unable to point beyond themselves to truth: without truth, Marcello has no possibility of freedom. This is not a tautology. A person is not truly free if rational decisions of choice cannot be made by independent knowledge. Marcello’s consciousness makes it impossible for him to achieve any Great Awakening.

    Marcello suffers forgetfulness, of a sense of loss, and the sense of having a debt outstanding. He is on the spiritually dead side of the mythological river of λήθη (Lethe) meaning “forgetfulness,” or “oblivion.” The souls entering the mythic Underworld of Hades drank from the river Lathe to forget they were dead. The letter is a negative prefix, or alpha privative. The Greek word for "Truth" is ἀληθείᾳ (a-lethea) that means the negation of forgetting, or “remembering.

    According to Johannine Christology the Logos has a face. Marcello is unable to recognize a substantial life even as it is disclosed to him as the face of the Other.

    Parody only reinforces the Holy. This film was understandably criticized by the Vatican, and unfortunately was banned in many states for parodying the second coming of Jesus; but below the surface of cultural symbolic imagery the film is actually very religious in its attempt to reach for a spiritual dimension in a negative way; however, it may not have been intended by the film makers. The first words for religion must be words against religion the Christian Theologian, Paul Tillich, counseled religious thinkers.

    (Another copy of this essay and others can be found at "Strange Phenomenon.")
     
    Last edited: Jun 28, 2020
  18. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    I edited this section of post -83, The Machine Paradigm of Nature and Human Disenchantment. I have a completed version here at Strange Phenomenon.
     
  19. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    My original link the the movie was removed, but this new link is better.
     
    Last edited: Jul 26, 2020
  20. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    I have been binge watching Dr. Gregory B. Sadler’s free online course on Hegel watching about four videos per day! I am trying to catch up with Dr. Sadler’s lectures on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (1807)(Miller’s trans. pdf.). This week he is at paragraph 653, and with only 40 paragraphs behind I plan to catch up with him at the section on religion at para. 762.

    In my copy of Miller’s translation of Hegel, I found my notes written in the margins taken during Dr. David Carr’s class on Hegel. We didn’t just cover the Preface and Introduction, but skipped through the entire text. Dr. David Carr is best known for translating Edmond Husserl’s “The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology,” (1970). Dr. Sadler mainly sticks to the text and literally goes line by line so the lectures are very thorough; however, I like his interpretations which are often the high point of the lectures in my opinion. He has published many other videos also.

    Also, Dr. Sadler’s lectures provide very helpful flowchart diagrams, and if you look in the back of Miller’s translation of Hegel, there are very short, but a concise summary analysis of each paragraph that will help you stay on track (Analysis The Text, Miller trans. page 495).

    Also, watching videos from Dr. Sadler, Dr. Vervaeke, and Dr. J.A. Niederhauser has caused me to increase by daily timed reading to about three hours a day. I have been reading Husserl’s “Ideas I “(pdf.), Heidegger’s “Being and Time (pdf.), Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, and Ernest Cassirer’s Volume One of “The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms: Language,” (1923-1929)(pdf.) which is pure gold.

    I had to take a break from Husserl’s “Ideas I “ otherwise I’ll have brain damage.

    In 1979 I first read Cassirer’s short book, “Language and Myth” (1946), but stopped because I had to resolve in my own mind the many issues written about in my collection of essays, “A Theory of Spiritual Experience (2020).”

    Why turn toward Ernest Cassirer’s philosophy of science and language? Cassirer stands philosophically between Kant and Hegel. Cassirer writes like Hegel, but is much easier to understand than Hegel; however, his analysis of language is Neo-Kantianism of the Marburg school. Both Husserl and Heidegger also borrow much from Hegel’s phenomenology and you can see it in their writing and reasoning. This is the main reason that I am reviewing Hegel online. Cassirer develops a theory of symbolism that synthesizes scientific and non-scientific epistemological paradigms! If that isn’t enough, Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms effortlessly slips from a critique of reason to a critique of culture. It’s gold!

    I am finally doing what I want in retirement. It is a shame that it took 35 years doing jobs I really didn’t like doing. If the authoritarians keep power past the next election, many people will suffer the same fate and have to postpone life. And the problem with that is after 35 years you may not be the same person which means destructiveness because that is the outcome of life unlived.

    The Good Professor, Dr. Vervaeke, has a great talent of listening to professional and non-professional philosophers, authors, and writers and translating their points of view into a variety of systematic philosophic-scientific methodologies for critical reflection such as phenomenology, dialectical analysis, critical philosophy, cognitive science, and psychology. His monthly Question and Answer videos are particularly interesting and relevant. Dr. Vervaeke also goes deep into critical philosophical polemics of today (postmodernism), religion (religion above religion), and culture (Yes, let’s steal it back!) which are of particular interest to me.

    Voices with Vervaeke: Best Synoptic Overview of “The Meaning Crisis,” & My Work with Eric Brown

     
    Last edited: Aug 8, 2020
  21. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    Here is a list of themes that the Frankfurt School brought to our analysis of modern industrial ideology. I want to reuse these topics as a category list for different kinds of analysis.

    1.Extended ideological critique of modern industrial society.

    2. Ideological critique of Logical Positivism.

    3. Negation— “Critique of "false" and reified experience by breaking through cultural forms and languages. Negative dialectics expresses the idea of critical thought so conceived that the apparatus of domination cannot co-opt it.”

    4. Interpretation of the theory of politics and language.

    The written resources to develop these themes already exists and are massive! See a summary view at “Early influences of the Frankfurt School” as a model for similar analysis.

    The Struggle Against Solipsism.

    The critique of Positivistic ideology is complex and technical, but it can be introduce as a relatively clearer critique of Solipsism. Solipsism can be a “presentation concept” to frame this discussion for critiquing science and technology. One cannot logically and consistently accept—or reject for that matter-- Positivism as the paradigm of scientific objectivity, and then reject a critique of Positivism as too abstract because these abstractions are already contained in Positivism’s methodology.

    The critique of solipsism was one of Wittgenstein’s goals in writing the Tractatus by showing the limits of language just as Kant demonstrated the limits of Reason in The Critique of Pure Reason. For Wittgenstein language is only meaningful when connected to the world of empirical facts, just as for Kant we can only know the world of experience through the categorical lens of space and time. Both philosophers critiqued solipsism as a symptom of overly reductionist philosophies.
    Wittgenstein in showing the limits of factual discourse faced the same problem except he cannot said whether a named object exists or not exist because their names are only names-- the objects are the meaning of a name. So he faces the same boundary as the solipsist: he is unable to name objects that do not exist.

    1. The world is all that is the case
    .—Wittgenstein (Tractatus)(pdf.)

    (∀x)Wx

    “For all x, x is the world.” I think this notation captures Wittgenstein’s meaning, but this proposition could be stated in another way just as it could be stated in ordinary language. For example proposition “1” could be symbolized as (x)(Wx ⊃ Cx). However, the actual case could also be the “world,” so that the expression could be propositionally stated as a definition:

    (x∀)[(Wx ⊃ Cx)*(Cx ⊃ Wx)]
    “The world is all that is the case, and all that is the case is the world.”

    But is the predicate nominal “W = is the world,” just another object, or is it a constructed unity of relations? In other words, the capital letter “W” (the predicate, or property constant used in Predicate Logic) is being used to denote both relational and non-relational properties. “All that is the case” include relations. Wittgenstein said, "Situations can be described but not given names." (3.144). Therefore, since a relation cannot be named, it cannot be an object. There are other propositions in the Tractatus that builds states of affairs from the concepts of Objects, states of affairs, and facts (2.01-2.0141), see Wittgenstein On Objects. However, he must have other propositions about states of affairs and facts because the one proposition “The world is all that is the case,” is inadequate in itself.
    How would the logical expression be written to imply that “the world” is a constructed unity of relations? The logician would say that the expression “for all x,” or (x∀) means whatever it can be expanded or quantified to—a very long conjunction of “ands”, (Wa and Wb) and (Wc and Wd) and (We and Wf), and so on.

    This task would only be possible if 1.) There were a finite number of entities in the real universe. 2.) We had a name for every entity in the real universe. However, the real world has a non-finite number of entities so such as long conjunctions of “ands” would be impossible to complete.

    Take for example the proposition “Every Even Number is Divisible by 2.” Writing out the conjunction would be an endless chain of “ands” (symbolized with * asterisk), as in the proposition, [(N1 * N2 * N3….) * (E0 * E2 * E4...)]. The universal quantifier (∀x) “for all x” is a shorthand and necessarily exclusive so that we can only symbolize the proposition as the following:

    (∀x)[(Nx * Ex) ⊃ Dx]
    "Every even number is divisible by two.”

    Sometimes symbolic logic is so minimalist, and so simple that it is difficult to comprehend. A problem of logical symbolization translates into metaphysics as the problem of solipsism. The symbols of logic can only operate in a finite world of entities; those entities that we can name, and yet this is an operationally impossible task due to computational explosion. What is the name of that which we cannot name? "Noumenon” from ancient Greek νοούμενoν means "something that is thought," or "the object of an act of thought." The shorthand of language and logic excludes much of what we call the world due to reductionist tendencies of symbolic systems. Kant names this existential residuum the thing-in-itself, or Noumenon. Kant is using the term noumenon to mean that the thing-in-itself cannot be known in principle, and not merely as an object yet undiscovered. Solipsism insists that only one’s own experiences are real, and the appearances, or phenomena represent the whole of the reality, i.e., of what is the case.
     
    Last edited: Aug 22, 2020
  22. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    Sorry, a symbol typo in a key notation. The "" is the proper symbol in the expression above.
     
  23. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    About 3 a.m. this morning I awakened, and immediately got up, turned my computer on, and went directly to this typo.

    Well, I still don't like it even with the edited symbol. It's not essential to my main argument concerning theory incompleteness so I'll use another expression instead. The final version of the essay is at Strange Phenomenon.

    (x∀)[(Wx ⊃ Cx)] ⊃ (x∀)[(Cx ⊃ Wx)]
    “If the world is all that is the case, then what is the case is the world.”
     
    Last edited: Aug 25, 2020
  24. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    I wish I could of included this new Noam Chomsky video interview posted yesterday with this essay, "The Struggle Against Solipsism" posted here last Saturday. This thread is a constellation of six five essays (the final versions at Strange Phenomenon), and has at some point or another touched on many of the philosophical issues discussed by Chomsky in this interview.

    Also, a day or so after posting this essay, I found another very interesting new video dialogue between Dr. Veveake, Dr. James Carse, at the Stoa hosted by Peter Limberg. I had a friend recommend Carse's book "Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility,"(1986) ten years ago! I am reading it now, and must say it is a very, very good example of dialectical reasoning joined with phenomenological description. I would place myself on the infinite game player team!
    Two videos:

    Noam Chomsky: Science, Philosophy, Morality, & Anarchism (Interview)


    Playing the Infinite Game During the Meaning Crisis w/ James Carse and John Vervaeke

     
    Last edited: Aug 27, 2020
  25. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    Well, I finished Husserl’s “Ideas I” (pdf.). It is a very difficult book to read as it endlessly creates highly abstract yet necessary distinctions after distinction and so the reader must have some understanding of the larger project of phenomenology as a whole in relation to other methodologies to endure Husserl’s analysis. “Ideas I” is the kind of book you have to take a break from to review Husserl’s goal of creating an empiricist science of essences. I recommend reading as much as possible around phenomenology before reading “Ideas I.” It is possible, however, to read the near to last section “Phenomenology of Reason”(pdf. pagination. 175) to get a larger view of phenomenological methodology.

    Cassirer’s first volume of “The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms: Language” (pdf.) is about him empirical ethnological studies of languages in ancient and modern cultures. Cassirer’s linguistic research involves many famous German scholars and often uses Greek words as categories of language and speech such as space, time, and force. Cassirer is strongly influenced by the Neo-Kantian philosopher, Wilhelm von Humboldt, who also studied world languages, and like Cassirer, attempts to unite all sciences within a Kantian epistemological model. The most interesting section, “The Linguistic Development of the Concept of Number,”(ibid., pages 226-249) is on the emergence of the concept of number in various cultures.

    It is here, and in many other places, that Husserl and Cassirer’s writing sound alike—in fact at some points I had to checked to be sure I was reading Cassirer and not Husserl. Both philosophers discuss linguistic expressions of spatial and temporal differences, the I-concept, nouns (thinghood), pronouns (universals), verbs (action), case modes of verbs ( indicative, subjunctive, potential, ect.), and counting as these linguistic concepts and functions developed in cultures with shockingly different numbering systems. For example, some ancient people used a different number for different groups of objects: ten ropes, ten animals, or ten people—each group of ten had a different number signification! Cassirer’s studies found the Shambala language (Vol. 1 Language, pdf., 235) had 1,000 forms in the active indicative verb mode alone! Cassirer’s aim is to find the universal necessary principles for the formation of linguistic unities of sense derived from “originary” experience such as time, space, action, and number. Cassirer examines these symbolic forms as they appear in language formation around the world.

    One the other hand, Husserl’s goal is to show the phenomenological structure of consciousness itself by using his highly specialized language to describe consciousness as modes of intention as for example with time, space, expectation, remembering, acting, judging, believing and other intentional modifications of consciousness. Husserl also speaks of “originarily given” experience (Ideas I, pdf. p.190), and “cognition simplicity,” or the simplest unmodified unit of meaning—such as a “yard,” not a lumber yard, brick yard, or court yard (Ibid., pdf. p 195). Husserl instead seeks unities of meaning in consciousness just as Cassirer categorizes them as linguistic grammatical functions that mirror consciousness. Husserl writes the following with his own emphasis in italic text:

    “In a certain way, and with some caution in the use of words, we can also say that all real unities are “unities of sense.” Unites of sense presuppose…a sense-bestowing consciousness which, for its part, exist absolutely and not by virtue from another sense-bestowal. If one derives the concept of reality from natural realities, from unities of possible experience, then “all the world” or “all of Nature” is, of course equivalent to the all of realities; but to identify the latter with the all of being, and thus to absolutize it itself is a countersense. An absolute reality is just as valid as a round square. Reality and world are names here precisely for certain valid unities of sense, unities of “sense” related to certain concatenations of absolute, of pure consciousness which, by virtue of their essence, bestow sense and demonstrate sense-validity precisely thus and not otherwise (Husserl, Ideas I, pdf. page. 76).”

    Husserl and Cassirer both reject Berkeleian Idealism. They are each individually a combination of logician and lexicographer except that Husserl wants to strip unities of sense (essences) of all historical meaning to reach a pure essence of meaning. This is the opposite that Cassirer seeks which is to trace in language symbolic forms such as number, but also in myth (non-scientific) and reason (scientific) that also have their origin in human experience of some kind. Cassirer’s second volume “The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms: Mythic Thought, Vol. 2”(pdf.) is his next study which is also difficult to read; not so much because its content is so dense, but because his insights into mythic symbolism are so profound that one must stop reading momentarily.

    I finished reading Dr. James P. Carse, “Finite and Infinite Games.” This is not a book on statistical game theory, but it is the kind of book which can be read over and over again and still have new insights to offer. And I was shocked to recognize myself in some of his phenomenological descriptions of consciousness—this is also true from reading Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, which also describes forms of consciousness, or mind. Dr. Carse’s book seemingly speaks directly to the existential Self. I wish that I read it at a younger age as it explains a lot about life that always puzzled me. He also validated some of my own intuitions. In the best sense “Finite and Infinite Games,” is a very unusual book; clearly written; demonstrates dialectical reasoning and the phenomenological method; a spiritually inspiring, but mysterious philosophical work.

    I caught up with Dr. Sadler’s lectures on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, and will stay with his lectures through the section on Religion. Meanwhile, I am reading Jean Hyppolites commentary titled, “Genesis and Structure of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit,” (1946) Northwestern University Press, reviewing the sections already covered. Dr. Sadler’s lectures are right on the mark! I should note philosophers Michael Foucault and Jacques Derrida studied under Hyppolite. I have not studied Foucault, but instead go to the source of his thinking--Hegel. Dr. Sadler is also doing short “Core Concept” video lectures on Kierkegaard, my favorite philosopher, and on Dostoevsky—good lectures for learning and reviewing.

    Dr. Vervaeke has been doing very serious and interesting work in cognitive science with psychologist Gregg Henriques. Vervaeke delivers an insightful lecture on Descartes who also is Husserl’s favorite philosopher. They discuss the “meaning crisis” using a phenomenological methodology, critical philosophy by addressing the following questions: 1) The function problem: what does consciousness do? 2) The nature/generation problem: how something like consciousness fit into the scientific worldview? 3) The integration problem: what is the relationship between the answers to questions (1) and (2)?

    It gets even better. Dr. Matt Segall is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness a the California Institute of Integral studies and discusses some very difficult historical ontological and metaphysical problems regarding the same meaning crisis issues mentioned above with Dr. Vervaeke while using the same critical philosophical rigor and discipline of known scientific methodologies.
     

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