Philosophy Discussion Forums

Number2018:
If I understand you correctly, your main point is that conscience
Is impossible without relation with Others. And, since the essential Other – God, Transcendental Being, or Law are practically unknown and unachievable, there must be a particular necessary connection of conscience with guilt. So, Guilt must, in fact, be the a priori that corresponds to transcendence, for each person or for everyone, guilty or innocent.

Did I say that? I hope not, though there is in this something right. Anyway, the essential other, sort of a Buberian Thou? Oh, I did talk about Kierkegaard. I don't necessarily buy all he says, but he does have his finger on something important. It's Cartesian, though not the cogito, but the unknown: out practical lives are bound to time, and time is not some mysterious presence in the world, it is identifiable in the structure of events we endure, whereby the past anticipates the future: we are in constant projection or anticipation of what will come, doxastic prisoners of the past, you might say, because all knowledge claims are inherently of this structure. Thought itself is of this structure. K holds that this is inherently sinful, though calling it this obscures the point. He says the only reality, actuality, he calls it, is the present that is altogether bypassed in our busyness with daily affairs, what Husserl will call almost 100 years later, the naive natural attitude. We need to stop this, what, this devotion and total engagement these affairs in time and discover(?) the soul and god in the eternal present.
The reason I find this important is it aligned with Eastern mysticism, which is essentially about liberation (moksa): what is it one does when one meditates? One stops time. I practice kriya yoga and I can tell you there is something very important about bringing consciousness into the present moment and out of the temporal stream of everydayness. There is, to use Kierkegaard's term, a qualitative distinction to what occurs, unlike the usual quantitative (as I would say Kant had it: he thought all there was to human knowledge was sensate intuitions and their concepts. Nothing qualitatively different could occur) repetition. So yes, I take this god talk seriously but only in the manner that world's allows me to, and in the world there is this fascinating time/presence analysis and practical transcendence into the a kind of eternal present.
Now, guilt, having said the above: Kierkegaard posits a very simple idea (though he is never simple to read): Christian sin is estrangement from god, and this estrangement reduces to none other than the Buddhist's first of the four noble truths: suffering is attachment to this world. Guilt, all of it, is the realization that there is in all we do something existentially wrong with the world. It rises up in the everyday affairs we have as an intimation of a qualitative failing of our relationship with the world. There is a lot to say on this, but I don't have time now. Suffice it to say, K would have made a great Buddhist had he not been so influenced by Christian metaphysics.

Nevertheless, may we conceive
different ontological conditions of consciousness?
Who are the others, when we drive? Don’t we actually activate subjectivity and a multiplicity of partial consciousness connected to the car‘s technological mechanisms? Is there “individuated subject” that is in control of the driving? If one knows how to drive, one acts without thinking about it, without engaging reflexive consciousness. She is guided by the car’s machinic assemblage. Her actions and subjective components (memory, attention, perception, etc.) are “automatized,” they are a part of the machinic, hydraulic, electronic, etc. apparatuses, constituting non-human parts of the assemblage.

This is regarding others. The point made here is not that others are always there, but that language itself is inherently social. This is because ww acquired it as a social event, or in social events. How does one learn what an autonobile is? First, it was a problem solving event in the infantile mind when people were talking, using language, about cars, driving, errands and so forth; 'car' the sound people made, was passed about in social events and meant nothing at all until the connection was made between that thing with doors on wheels and the sound and eventually spelling of 'car'. One assimilates the connection while observing language models through conversation. This happened with all language, this essential pragmatic event, and this basic dynamic is what the meaning of terms is bound to. Apart from this, there are no cars of trucks or buses, or anything for that matter.

Hereandnow wrote: ↑October 4th, 2018, 12:21 am

Nevertheless, may we conceive
different ontological conditions of consciousness?
Who are the others, when we drive? Don’t we actually activate subjectivity and a multiplicity of partial consciousness connected to the car‘s technological mechanisms? Is there “individuated subject” that is in control of the driving? If one knows how to drive, one acts without thinking about it, without engaging reflexive consciousness. She is guided by the car’s machinic assemblage. Her actions and subjective components (memory, attention, perception, etc.) are “automatized,” they are a part of the machinic, hydraulic, electronic, etc. apparatuses, constituting non-human parts of the assemblage.

This is regarding others. The point made here is not that others are always there, but that language itself is inherently social.

I tried to make a point that conscious social practices are not necessarily mediated by language, and in many cases, they are entirely different from reflective ones. The “others,” taking part in driving a car, are non-human technical devices, interacting with a variety of states of a driver’s mind.

Hereandnow wrote: ↑October 4th, 2018, 12:21 am
.How does one learn what an automobile is? First, it was a problem-solving event in the infantile mind when people were talking, using language, about cars, driving, errands and so forth; 'car' the sound people made, was passed about in social events and meant nothing at all until the connection was made between that thing with doors on wheels and the sound and eventually spelling of 'car'. One assimilates the connection while observing language models through conversation. This happened with all language, this essential pragmatic event, and this basic dynamic is what the meaning of terms is bound to.

While learning about an automobile, from the early childhood, one has a direct non-verbal experience of being in a car with adults. Later, while learning how to drive, one encounters and practices a variety of skills, most of which are not mediated by language, though all of them are entirely social practices. What is the role of language when we learn how to swim? A non-verbal autistic child may successfully acquire abilities to swim and drive a car. Therefore, it is possible to consider the existence of a multiplicity of different states of consciousness, so that the reflective conscious, engaging language, is not the only and the most important one.
The trader in the trade room, looking at diagrams, curves, and various types of data, surrounded by computer’s screens, assisted by numerous machines, makes decisions about price-setting in real time – she experiences and simultaneously
mobilizes different processes of conscientization,
one succeeding the next, superimposing one onto the other, connecting or disconnecting according to the current events of financial flows. She acts and reacts instantaneously, non-verbally – don’t we find here another kind of cogito?
Later, when she attends a concert of symphonic music, her mind profoundly immerses into an intensive nonverbal aesthetic experience. Just while reflecting on her life and contemplating on what is going wrong with her marriage, she may want to turn to Kierkegaard’s account of his failure to achieve conjugal happiness and to read Gjentagelsen, exercising her faculties of meaningful verbal reflective conscious.

Hereandnow wrote: ↑October 4th, 2018, 12:21 am
guilt, having said the above: Kierkegaard posits a very simple idea (though he is never simple to read): Christian sin is estrangement from god, and this estrangement reduces to none other than the Buddhist's first of the four noble truths: suffering is attachment to this world. Guilt, all of it, is the realization that there is in all we do something existentially wrong with the world. It rises up in the everyday affairs we have as an intimation of a qualitative failing of our relationship with the world. There is a lot to say on this, but I don't have time now. Suffice it to say, K would have made a great Buddhist had he not been so influenced by Christian metaphysics.

The Buddhist way of Enlightenment is about renouncing the world, detachment from it and destroying the self. I do not think that it could become Kierkegaard’s way. His passion, genius, and a tremendous effort are admirable; yet, since our time is out of joint, we do not know what our sin is, though we still experience guilt. K’s solutions of faith do not work anymore; psychological ones, Freudian or Lacanian are neither
sufficient. I assume that K’s way of battle with guilt and despair after his decision not to get married, which has been shown in Gjentagelsen, is still actual. Theology is not the primary resource been applied there; K stated and demonstrated that Repetition is the main force of contemporarily.

Number2018
I tried to make a point that conscious social practices are not necessarily mediated by language, and in many cases, they are entirely different from reflective ones. The “others,” taking part in driving a car, are non-human technical devices, interacting with a variety of states of a driver’s mind.

Right. And I see the idea, Heidegger saw it, that language is not the most fundamental description of our interpretative ready to hand grasp of the world. Instrumentality is, you know, the hammer and the glue pot: we take such things up and use them, and it is in the using, the instrumentality of the engagement, that true primordial meanings are shown. Language is inherently a utility, of the kind I describe above (and I base my thoughts not entirely on Heidegger. I follow the pragmatists, as well). So the car and other "non-human technical devises" that we use all time, are taken up pragmatically first, I mean, it is the practical issue that stands before an individual upon engagement, and at the basis of simply understanding what it is to sit in a car at all is this utility of language, which constitutes our familiarity with the world itself; indeed, there are those who will say that our "sense' of reality itself is no more than reified familiarity, familiarity that began at birth or even in the womb(?), and that since this familiarity is essentially that of utility and the utility of language, our sense of reality is reducible to simply the bedrock of accomplished problem solving. This is John Dewey, and it is close, I would argue (along with others) to Heidegger.
So anyway, language is everywhere, IN the car, the clock on the wall, just by simple recognition.

The Buddhist way of Enlightenment is about renouncing the world, detachment from it and destroying the self. I do not think that it could become Kierkegaard’s way. His passion, genius, and a tremendous effort are admirable; yet, since our time is out of joint, we do not know what our sin is, though we still experience guilt. K’s solutions of faith do not work anymore; psychological ones, Freudian or Lacanian are neither
sufficient. I assume that K’s way of battle with guilt and despair after his decision not to get married, which has been shown in Gjentagelsen, is still actual. Theology is not the primary resource been applied there; K stated and demonstrated that Repetition is the main force of contemporarily.

Not perfectly clear on where you stand here. Repetition is exactly our boundness to time, something which K is set on explaining. And as to why his solutions don't work any more, I don't get it: what doesn't work? Do you disagree with his analysis of repetition and time? It is an old battle between Parmenedes and Heraclitus, though quite different really. K says we do in fact have an extraordinary existence, but we ignore it because we are in TIME. This is the essential idea. I would put the burden of sin on time and repetition as this is estrangement from god. Heidegger's dasein is K's sin. K puts no stock in given theologies at all. As to the Buddhist: what is the purpose of Buddhism? It has only one, and the rest is just elaboration on this one thing: liberation from our misery into a pure bliss, which is our true nature. K's knight of faith (this is in Concluding Unscientific Postscripts, Fear and Trembling, etc.) I would argue is all about this, for to escape time and realize who you really are, as the competent Buddhist might say, this is to escape repetition.

Just a moment Number2018. I am reading Repetition now to make sure I don't get my terms mixed up and I have the matter straight. Give me till tomorrow.

Ok, it is trickier, far trickier than I thought. Kierkegaard can be a little like a Zen koan that makes its point in unexpected ways. The question is why does Kierkegaard champion the repetition in life and repudiate recollection? The short answer to this is that repetition occurs, and I am interpreting now, in the present moment, ideally. I say ideally because, well, it is such an odd way to make this point. Repetition CAN be understood, and usually is, as the enemy spontaneous existence, and so it is a wonder that K uses this to say exactly the opposite. Repetition for K is actual engagement int he present, which he holds, the eternal present that is, to be the wellspring of god and the soul. In Fear and Trembling the knight of faith is described as an ordinary person in appearance, an accountant or a baker, but the life that is lived is IN the eternal present, lived in the presence of god. A very different kind of living, and I think K has just this in mind. Regarding Buddhism, it is very close, though Buddhists don't usually talk about god, they do describe enlightenment in terms that are descriptively otherworldly,the "holy" and the like are quite common, but the emphasis is usually on emptiness and formlessness. But here is the point I would make: Buddhists, accomplished authorities on eastern enlightenment, continue to be in the world, they simply understand all of its manifold particularity in the light of a singularity, the Buddha nature (or atman/Brahman; I don't really care for the metaphysical discussion that surrounds these terms). This is exactly what K is on about. to live in repetition is off set from living in mere recollection, this latter being merely conceptual or sentimental, a mere memory. THIS is what reason can do to the world, it can reduce holiness to the mundanity of the illusion that a thing is the abstraction of language and logic. K is much more clear on this in the Concept of Anxiety, Sickness Unto Death, and elsewhere.
But WHY does he make it seemingly intentionally obscure with this term repetition?? Madness. So I looked, and came across the idea that he has a double purpose: he is also trying to make the reader read again and again, to REPEAT the reading so as to asure the requisite exposure to the thoughts contained in his Repetition. Philosophy is like this across the board in that one simply must read a thing over and over. Reading Kant once, like a novel, is absurd.
So I had Repetition all wrong. Thanks for bringing my attention to this.