It might also help to shed light on this if I clarify Sartre’s concept of consciousness that I’m making use of here, especially non-positional awareness. So, from a phenomenological angle, we can say consciousness is always consciousness of something, and from this we get intentionality. I look at the lamp in front of me and that is the object of my consciousness. But, of course, that is not the whole story, for I am not only aware of the lamp. It doesn’t fill my awareness. I do not become the object. For even to have an object, we must have a subject and implicit to non-positional awareness is that separation—what is going on is an observation that requires an observer, i.e. me. So, this is a moment to moment background knowledge and is pre-reflective. It is not me saying to myself after looking at the lamp, “I looked at the lamp”, it is included in, immanent in, the experience of looking at the lamp — Baden

I wonder how your argument would change if we substituted Husserlian for Sartrean phenomenonology. In this case there is no subject or object outside of the intentional acts by which the subject engages with the world. The subject only exists in its acts, and in these acts it doesn’t simply observe objects, it constitutes or enacts them. The subjective pole of the subject-object relation supplies an anticipative thrust (protension) drawn from its past (retentional) history. My awareness of the lamp is not just a passive gaze but an active constituting act. The ‘physicality’ of the lamp is not something intrinsic to it as a material element of the natural world. It is a product of objectivizing idealizations we perform. Similarly the otherness of the other is an otherness which is constituted within my own subjectivty on the basis of consonance’s which allow me to recognize the other as a person. Thus, no matter. how alienated my experience of myself or another, this alienation emerges from within an overarching comportment of familiarity and recognizability.

Gadamer’s phronesis is not at all ad hoc, and I’m pretty sure Josh wouldn’t recommend that.

Amusingly, this is a case of not having rules for knowing when and how to apply rules! And as we know, the lack of “rules for rules” doesn’t make everything ad hoc and chaotic. — J

:100: :up:

I cannot accept that there are no binaries, and everything is a formless soup of amorphousness.

I cannot accept that Tyrannosaurus rex did not have an existence outside the human mind, a real, living and breathing existence outside of our concept of it.

I cannot accept that there is no binary between the mind and a mind-independent world, even if I accept that discovering it is philosophically difficult. — RussellA

The issue isn’t whether the dinosaur existed before humans. It’s that the meaning of ‘T. rex’, it’s place in our world, is a product of our engagement now. That’s the intertwining I’m pointing to. Empirical knowledge is not a passive representing of what’s out there. Discovering the world always also involves inventing new ways of doing things with it. As Evan Thompson wrote:

I would give up both realism and anti-realism, then, in favour of what could be called a pluralist pragmatism. What the pluralist insists on is that there is no foundational version, one which anchors all the rest or to which all others can be reduced. The pragmatist insists that the world is both found and made: it is made in the finding and found in the making. To erase the boundary between knowing a language and knowing our way in the world gives us a fresh appreciation of the world. That world, however, is not given, waiting to be represented. We find the world, but only in the many incommensurable cognitive domains we devise in our attempt to know our way around. The task of the philosopher is not to extract a common conceptual scheme from these myriad domains and to determine its faithfulness to some uncorrupted reality; it is, rather, to learn to navigate among the domains, and so to clarify their concerns in relation to each other.

However, the meta-level constraints that make any justificatory practice possible , publicity of criteria, other minds, an external world, and sufficient stability of meaning to teach/correct, are not optional add-ons. They’re what Wittgenstein would call hinges: not evidences, but conditions of sense for giving and asking for reasons. — Sam26

I think what you’re looking for is not some meta-level hinge, but the interwoven threads (family resemblance) that run though all hinges, not as a general overarching category (Wittgenstein never placed the general above the particular) but as that which emerges always in its own particular and unique way in actual use. Put differently, it seems to me what you’re talking about here is not itself a hinge, a belief, whether certain or not, but the condition of possibility for any hinge, any belief. For instance, the structure of temporality is a pre-condition for hinge beliefs, but we dont have to believe in time in order for it to make hinges possible.

I reject two further moves in your reply:

1) that “securing the validity of a belief is not the reference to facts/rules/criteria,” and

2) that rule-following requires a “creative, intuitive” modification of norms to count as knowledge.

On my account, facts still bite, and public criteria remain the arbiters of epistemic “I know.” There is skilled judgment in application, yes, but it’s judgment inside guardrails, not free-form creativity. That is a core difference. — Sam26

The question is whether justification is fundamentally a matter of rule-following within stable criteria, or of creative, situated responsiveness. You interpret “creative, intuitive” norm-use as “free-form ad hoc improvisation” unless tightly constrained. But I mean something more like Gadamer’s phronesis — a context-sensitive application of rules that inevitably alters their force.

As Joseph Rouse interprets Wittgenstein:

We can’t appeal to social regularities or collectively presupposed norms within a practice: there are no such things, but more important, if there were they would not thereby legitimately bind us. Any regularities in what practitioners have previously done does not thereby have any authority to bind subsequent performances to the same regularities. The familiar Wittgensteinian paradoxes about rule following similarly block any institution of norms merely by invocation of a rule, since no rule can specify its correct application to future instances Practices should instead be understood as comprising performances that are mutually interactive in partially shared circumstances

The intelligibility of performances within a practice then depends upon the anticipation and partial achievement of appropriate alignment with others' performances and their circumstances,

You emphasize that “facts still bite” and “truth as thin correspondence.” This is consistent with a realist bent, but I don’t see Wittgenstein as a realist. Wittgenstein sees “fact” not as a metaphysical anchor but as a role within a language-game. This is how “facts” remain practice-constituted and reality-constrained.

When a qualitative pattern of practice changes (say, pre- to post-Copernican astronomy; pre- to post-germ theory), some cultural–historical hinges and method-norms shift. My layered-hinges view predicts that: bedrock hinges (external world, other minds, stability of meaning) remain; practice-level norms adjust; what counts as a good reason evolves publicly, not privately. — Sam26

Wittgenstein stresses that criteria gain their force through use, not through a fixed “guardrail” independent of practice. Are your guardrails themselves subject to evolution within forms of life, or do they function as transhistorical constraints? What does it mean to assert that some meta-level bedrock hinge remains? Why should it? Your inclusion of the concept of other minds and the external world as transhistorical reminds me that these are the very concepts that Husserl bracketed as part of his method of phenomenologically reducing presuppositions. I think Wittgenstein would be sympathetic to Husserl’s aim here. All hinges are ultimately contingent, because they are formed within ongoing historical processes of discursive interaction.

Non-linguistic foundational beliefs are certainties carried in stable patterns of action, pre- or non-verbal, but still beliefs in my sense, acquired and held within a form of life. For example, our practiced confidence in a stable, manipulable environment, the way ordinary engagement presupposes a world with enduring objects and reliable regularities. We do not typically state these as propositions; they are expressed in what we unhesitatingly do. — Sam26

I would emphasize the ‘how’ more than the ’what’ in forms of life. Not just that the world has stable, reliable patterns. After all, all forms of life open up stable, patterned ways of engaging with the world. What is intrinsic to any particular form of life is how it opens up such a stable comportment. What is the qualitative nature of the way these patterns are organized, and when a qualitative pattern is transformed as one form of life becomes another, how does this change the way the world appears? It also seems to me that what is most significant about justified true beliefs for Wittgenstein is that securing the validity of a belief is not the reference
to a pre-existing fact, rule, picture, criterion or norm.
In his discussion of rule-following , Wittgenstein indicates that this is not enough for knowing what is true. Justification requires a creative, inituitive use of criteria, norms and facts that modifies them for the contingencies of actual situations.

Does this world exist within the mind or external to the mind? Is our world the construction of our mind. As Schopenhauer wrote "The world is my representation". As Abai Qunanbaiuly wrote “A person’s mind is the mirror of the world. If the mirror is clouded, the world appears distorted.” Wittgenstein avoided such a problem by never giving his opinion where his "world" exists. A strategic decision that does not seem to have affected his reputation — RussellA

Is it that he never gave his opinion, or that his answer is implicit in his later work, but has been missed by many because they are still looking for answers within the old binary:either mind or world, either inside or outside? Merleau-Ponty directs us to this way beyond the inside-outside trap:

” “[t]he world is inseparable from the subject, but from a subject who is nothing but a project of the world; and the subject is inseparable from the world, but from a world that it itself projects.” (Phenomenology of Perception)

Ontological idealism of being is the view that being is fundamentally of the mind, where reality does not consist of mind-independent particles or forces, but is grounded in consciousness and reason.
Husserl's phenomenology is certainly that of ontological idealism, where any belief in the world's independent existence is put aside to focus on human experiences.

Heidegger's Dasein is also about ontological Idealism. It is about "being-in-the-world", in that we are not detached observers of the world but embedded in our experiences — RussellA

Right, but these are peculiar forms of Idealism. Heidegger’s Idealism puts into question the priority of mind, reason and consciousness, associating all of these with the Cartesian subject, which is still operative in Kant and Hegel. Dasein is more radically in the world than any notion of a conscious subjectivity perceiving objects can convey.

Your critique of “wokeism” focuses on certain highly visible activist actions and social media flashpoints, whereas I’m more interested in the underlying intellectual currents that can, at least in principle, inform fairer treatment of others, without inevitably leading to the authoritarian excesses you’re concerned about.

It is the intellectual currents that inform their treatment of others, and that treatment manifests into the highly visible actions and social media flashpoints we’ve seen too many times, and the countless ones we haven’t seen.

As I see it the necessary mental segregation required to understand and believe these currents begets actual segregation, such as race or sexuality-based “affinity graduations”, or diversity hiring. — NOS4A2

To the right of these intellectual currents (dominated by Critical Theory and post-colonialism) are political
models showing little or no influence of Hegel and Marx (such as classical liberalism) To the left of the intellectual currents shaping wokism are postmodern social constructionist models, also drawing from Hegel and Marx but moving farther beyond them than wokism does. I support such perspectives, and am arguing that the intellectual ideas which both wokism and postmodern approaches draw from need to be assimilated in order to get to a politics beyond the wokist practices which you reject. Beyond means going forward, keeping the positive ideas which wokism draws from, rather than simply discarding this philosophical heritage and returning to older political thinking. Going forward means embracing thinking along the following lines:

By and large identity politics has depended on a rhetoric of blame, the illocutionary effects of which are designed to chastise the target (for being unjust, prejudiced, inhumane, selfish, oppressive, and/or violent). In western culture we essentially inherit two conversational responses to such forms of chastisement - incorporation or antagonism. The incorporative mode ("Yes, now I see the error of my ways") requires an extended forestructure of understandings (i.e. a history which legitimates the critic's authority and judgment, and which renders the target of critique answerable). However, because in the case of identity politics, there is no preestablished context to situate the target in just these ways, the invited response to critique is more typically one of hostility, defense and counter-charge.

In its critical moment, social constructionism is a means of bracketing or suspending any pronouncement of the real, the reasonable, or the right. In its generative moment, constructionism offers an orientation toward creating new futures, an impetus to societal transformation. Constructionist thought militates against the claims to ethical foundations implicit in much identity politics - that higher ground from which others can so confidently be condemned as inhumane, self-serving, prejudiced, and unjust. Constructionist thought painfully reminds us that we have no transcendent rationale upon which to rest such accusations, and that our sense of moral indignation is itself a product of historically and culturally situated traditions. And the constructionist intones, is it not possible that those we excoriate are but living also within traditions that are, for them, suffused with a sense of ethical primacy? As we find, then, social constructionism is a two edged sword in the political arena, potentially as damaging to the wielding hand as to the opposition.”(Ken Gergen, Social Construction and the Transformation of Identity Politics)

↪Joshs It just occurred to me spontaneously - don't want to make too much of it. — Wayfarer

A lot depends on what we want to make of the concept of the unconscious. For Husserl there is no unconscious, only the implicit. For Heidegger there isn’t even consciousness.( Maybe he was anticipating Trump)

Questions about the underlying vision of wokeism:

1. Is everything about politics? Or economics? Or race? Is anything in the public sphere simply not about these things, and if so, are those things good or bad for the community? Or should we focus on power structures? — Fire Ologist

Your critique of “wokeism” focuses on certain highly visible activist actions and social media flashpoints, whereas I’m more interested in the underlying intellectual currents that can, at least in principle, inform fairer treatment of others, without inevitably leading to the authoritarian excesses you’re concerned about.

If we zoom out from the noise, there are some core philosophical frameworks that have shaped what people call “woke” thinking, such as Implicit bias, the idea that people’s perceptions and decisions can be unconsciously shaped by stereotypes, even when they consciously reject prejudice. The value here isn’t in “shutting people down” but in cultivating awareness so we can interact more fairly.

Intersectionality is another woke concept. It is a way of understanding that people’s experiences aren’t shaped by just one identity category (race, gender, class, etc.) but by overlapping ones. It’s not a mandate to divide everyone into rigid groups, but a reminder that context matters in how people experience opportunities or barriers.

Then there’s critical race theory, which at its most basic is a scholarly framework for looking at how laws and institutions have embedded racial disparities over time, not as an accusation against individuals, but as a way to ask, “If these patterns exist, what’s sustaining them?” Discussed philosophically, these aren’t inherently about censorship, purity tests, or stripping away free speech. They’re tools for noticing complexity in human relations, and in that sense, they could enrich the very kind of civil discourse you value, if applied with humility rather than dogma.

So, I’d argue it’s possible to explore these ideas, even agree with parts of them, without signing on to every activist tactic or extreme proposal you’ve seen in the headlines. We can be critical of bad implementations without dismissing the frameworks entirely, and in doing so, maybe get closer to that “clear vision” you’re asking about.

Why does this remind me of the Libet experiments? :chin: — Wayfarer

Never thought of that connection. Course, one difference from Libet is that for Heidegger we know and feel this transcendence toward the world as it is happening via the authentic mood of anxiety. It is the feeling of being transposed into the ‘nothing’, that pregnant anticipation of a world coming to be in its mysterious potentiality.

For the woke, there is no debate or winning the argument - just shutting someone down who won’t agree. That’s what wokists don’t understand - they are oppressive, not liberating. They are self-contradictory, not a clear new vision. They want to defund the police, and are outraged when the police don’t serve them in time of need — Fire Ologist

Kind of hard to decide whether there’s a clear new vision floating around in the background when you haven’t said a word about underlying philosophical visions, just the stunts some activists who have gotten the attention of the media have pulled.

if such an alien were to arrive and tell us, we would likely have no difficulty in understanding it.
The secrets of existence may be very simple, like a biology lesson. We are just in the unfortunate position of being blind to this truth.
There may be sufficient information, or clues in the world we find ourselves in to work it out. That it just requires some clever, or intuitive thinking to work it out. — Punshhh

We are confronted by aliens all the time: alien cultures, politics, ethics and philosophy. We have enormous difficulty in understanding these aliens, and they are right in our midst. They are our neighbors. Thomas Kuhn said that new scientific paradigms become accepted not because everyone is made to understand the new science, but because the old generation dies off.

Accordingly, I argued that ontology was, properly speaking, concerned with the nature of being (literally, 'I am-ness') rather than of 'what exists'. This distinction I held to be an example of what I considered fundamental to the proper distinction of 'being' from 'existence', which is hardly recognised by modern philosophers. I was told that my definition was 'eccentric' and completely mistaken. Finally, I was sent a link to a paper I mentioned to you before, 'The Greek Verb 'To Be' and the Problem of Being' , Charles Kahn, whom I was told was an authority on the subject. But I learned that rather than challenging my claim, this paper actually supported it, through passages such as:

[Parmenides] initial thesis, that the path of truth, conviction, and knowledge is the path of "what is" or "that it is" (hos esti) can then be understood as a claim that knowledge, true belief, and true statements, are all inseperably linked to "what is so" - - not merely to what exists, but what is the case (emphasis in original).

[The] intrinsically stable and lasting character of Being in Greek - - which makes it so appropriate as an object of knowing and the correlative of truth - - distinguishes it in a radical way from our modern notion of existence.
— Charles H. Kahn
--

Finally, this conceptual divergence was definitively cemented in early Christian theology
— Astorre

hence Heidegger's critique of 'onto-theology', the 'objectification' of the being. While the basic fact of the matter is that Being is an act, not a thing. (Something that is hardly news to Buddhists.) — Wayfarer

For Heidegger, Dasein’s Being is its existence, but existence understood as the transcendence of a self , an exiting from itself in being ahead of itself in already being in the world. The ‘I am’ , the self, does not pre-exist its relation to the world, but only exists in coming back to itself from the world. The direction of this ‘act’, occurrence, happening, is from future to present, from world to self, rather than the other way around. In the happening of Being, what is the case is secondary to how it is the case, which is in turn secondary to why it is the case. The happening of Being always begins again and again from this wonder.

It seems to me you are confining “being” to the realm of linguistic tokens and mental concepts, and therefore discussing only our representation of being, not being itself.

But philosophy has long asked whether there is an ontological reality- “what is”- that exists independently of language, mind, or concepts — Astorre

I just thought I would mention, since you have been bringing Heidegger into this discussion, that while Heidegger would agree that reducing Being to mere linguistic or conceptual representation is a trap that the Western metaphysical tradition after Plato fell into, he would insist that the issue is not just limiting being to language and concepts, but that our very linguistic-conceptual framework is already rooted in a historical understanding of Being, one that has narrowed over centuries.

Heidegger would push back hard on your framing of “ontological reality” as existing independently of mind and language. He would argue that to claim Being exists independently would still be to treat Being like an object of metaphysical realism, another “thing” that is “out there” regardless of us.

Instead he would stress that Being is not a “thing” that “exists” alongside other entities. Our access to Being is always through our existence (Dasein), the being for whom Being is a question. Saying “exists independently” risks falling into the metaphysical opposition of “subject vs. object”, the very structure Heidegger wants to overcome. For Heidegger, Being is not in the mind, nor outside it; rather, it is the condition of intelligibility that makes both “mind” and “world” possible. Without language there is no Being, but language is not mere representation, it is unconcealment.

1. Is our freedom threatened when our choices can be forecasted?
2. Can we reclaim unpredictability in a data-driven age?
3. What ethical guardrails should we demand around social physics — Alonsoaceves

Statistical models require a prior abstractive flattening and regularizing of the domains that they presume to describe. Before those models can ‘discover’ predictable patterns in social behavior, choices must be made concerning what is to be included and what is to be left out of the map. The territory is the quirky and diverse variety of human ways of beings. I think the OP’ s concern about freedom being compromised by data technologies results from confusing the map with the territory. That confusion is the real threat, not the supposed predictability of human behavior.

There is pre-interpretive, pre-conceptual perception.
— Joshs
I agree entirely, apart from the last sentence. — Ludwig V

Damn it. I meant to write ‘ there is NO pre-interpretive, pre-conceptual perception’.

Let's take phenomenology, returning to the things themselves as they are given. The method is good, but it essentially records the world in new frames.. Phenomenology allows us to clear our judgments from previous experience. Cleared. And again took a picture. — Astorre

In phenomenology as Husserl and Merleau-Ponty conceived it, the ‘things themselves’ which are given to consciousness are not ‘recordings’ of real objects. They are not ‘pictures of the world’ but descriptions of constituting acts of intentionality. What a thing is in itself is the way it is constructed via mental processes which are directly in touch with the world.

Certainly the world that is in being for me, the world about which I have always had ideas and spoken about meaningfully, has meaning and is accepted as valid by me because of my own apperceptive performances because of these experiences that run their course and are combined precisely in those performances—as well as other functions of consciousness, such as thinking. But is it not a piece of foolishness to suppose that world has being because of some performance of mine? Clearly, I must make my formulation more precise. In my Ego there is formed, from out of the proper sources of transcendental passivity and activity, my “representation of the world, ” my “picture of the world, ” whereas outside of me, naturally enough, there is the world itself. But is this really a good way of putting it? Does this talk about outer and inner, if it makes any sense at all, receive its meaning from anywhere else than from my formation and my preservation of meaning? Should I forget that the totality of everything that I can ever think of as in being resides within the universal realm of consciousness, within my realm, that of the Ego, and indeed within what is for me real or possible?” (Husserl, Phenomenology and Anthropology

Yep, that sounds about right.

I exist within my own reality, whatever that reality is. It is logically impossible to discover what exists outside my own reality using knowledge that is part of my own reality.

Perhaps this is "Dasein".

This means that I am limited to thinking about the ontology of my own reality, and the process of thinking about my own reality is epistemological. — RussellA

Heidegger understands the term ontology in a peculiar way.
He draws from Kant’s idealism the notion of condition of possibility. Kant’s categories are the synthetic condition of possibility of epistemology. For Heidegger the ontological is something like a condition of possibility, but it is not transcendental in Kant’s sense. Think of it as a stance or perspective, the Being of a being in terms of its way of being, not what a being ‘is’ but how it is. These stances do not precede the existence of the world, they are what it means to exist. To exist is to open up a stance. An epistemology is what is made possible ( intelligible) by a stance.

I recognize that "seeing as aspect" is inherent in perception. What's bothering me is that as aspect is always an aspect of something. Wittgenstein's presentation of this seems to me to obscure that point. The duck-rabbit can be seen in two ways. But there is a third way, which is neutral between those intepretations and allows us to say that those two interpretations are interpretations of the same picture. I mean the description of the picture as a collection of marks on paper — Ludwig V

We understand ‘same picture’ by seeing it as ‘same picture’. Or as you put it, by seeing something as ‘marks on paper’. The notion of marks on paper is no less in need of interpretation than seeing something as a duck or a rabbit. There is pre-interpretive, pre-conceptual perception.

How can you arrive at an ontological belief without first going through an epistemological process? — RussellA

Here’s how Heidegger would answer that question. Let’s see if Astorre agrees:

Heidegger would reject the framing of the question, because it presupposes a priority of epistemology over ontology. Instead, he would argue that epistemology depends on a more basic ontological structure of existence, one that we are already immersed in as Dasein. So, ontological understanding is not a conclusion we reach, but a condition we uncover. Epistemology is derivative. Traditional epistemology (as in Descartes, Kant, etc.) starts with the subject-object divide and questions how the subject can know the world. But we don’t arrive” at ontological belief via epistemology. We start in it. We are always already involved in a world where Being is disclosed. The proper philosophical task is to uncover this ontological structure, not to justify it through epistemology.

When you talked about shifting foundations, I thought you were talking about dialectics. Becoming analyses out to Being and Non-Being, and that brings us to Heidegger's What is Metaphysics, one of my favorites. :grin: — frank

It’s one of my favorites too. ‘The Nothing nothings’

From the Eastern perspective, continental philosophy looks quite analytical. If you cover the entire Eurasian continent and pave the way from India to Great Britain, you get a spectrum from hot and sensual to cold and analytical. — Astorre

It seems to me the distinction you are making can just as well be cast as that between philosophy and literature as between West and East. With regard to the Russian writers you mention, it is further narrowed down to literature of a particular era, the 19th and 20th centuries, which happens to coincide with the Romanticism and post-Romanticism which swept across Europe. Russian literature's spiritual intensity emerged during the same period that produced equally passionate and non-analytical Western works. In fact, Romanticism came to Russia a bit later than it emerged in Europe.

To make your analysis more complete, shouldn’t you bring into the discussion Western works of literature from that period so we can see if perhaps they as well are more ‘hot and sensual’ than ‘cold and analytical’? I notice, for instance, that you didn’t mention Georges Bataille. His work is simultaneously French and utterly opposed to cold analyticity; dealing with death, eroticism, sacred violence, and mystical experience in ways that are arguably more extreme than anything in Dostoevsky.

Here are some other examples:

French literature:

Charles Baudelaire. Les Fleurs du mal* explored decadence, eroticism, and spiritual corruption with intense sensuality.

Arthur Rimbaud.His visionary poetry and A Season in Hell were explosively passionate and mystical

Paul Verlaine. Symbolist poetry emphasizing music, sensation, and emotional immediacy

Joris-Karl Huysmans. À rebours was a decadent exploration of aesthetic excess and spiritual crisis

German Literature:

Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus Spoke Zararhustra

Novalis. Romantic poet-philosopher whose *Hymns to the Night* merged erotic and mystical experience

Heinrich Heine. Poetry combining political passion with sensual romanticism

Stefan George. Aestheticist poet creating a cult of beauty and spiritual intensity

Thomas Mann. Works like *Death in Venice* explored psychological passion and moral decay

English Literature:

Oscar Wilde. Aestheticism prioritizing beauty and sensation over moral analysis

Algernon Charles Swinburne. Poetry notorious for its eroticism and pagan sensuality

D.H. Lawrence. Novels like *Women in Love* emphasized bodily experience and vital forces

Gerard Manley Hopkins. Religious poetry of intense spiritual and sensual experience

Scandinavian Literature:

August Strindberg. Psychological dramas of sexual and spiritual torment

Knut Hamsun. Hunger and other works emphasized irrational, instinctive experience

Hegel's roots were Neoplatonic, which is the philosophy Christianity is built on. Maybe he was instrumental in bringing it back to the academic scene, but it had been around for centuries. — frank

Neoplatonism may have been around for centuries, but my references to evolution and revolution were meant to capture how Hegel’s focus on historical change set the stage for Darwin, Marx, American Pragmatism, Nietzsche and Heidegger. I may be mistaken, but I dont think Christian neoplatonists were big on revolution. Hegel radically historicized the platonic absolute.

↪Joshs Brook Ziporyn. And it's not just nostalgia. Indra's Net is hardly a primitive ontology. — Wayfarer

Oops. Thanks. Concerning Indra’s net, it is not enough to transport the concept of the radical interdependence of all things as a one-size-fits-all cliche. One has to examine
what this means in practice in the way a culture conducts itself, treats expressions of otherness i. one’s family and community, avoids war and other violent acts which define the boundaries of ‘interconnectedness’.

If we stop fixating on essence and separate the concepts of sushchee (existent) and bytie (being), we can arrive at some interesting conclusions. The very notions of bytie and sushchee in Russian are something different. To exist (sushchestvovat’) simply means to be in a state where your attributes do not change by your own will (a stone lying on the ground, a tree growing according to its program, or an AI operating by an algorithm). To be (byt’) is something more than mere existence. It's roughly what happens when something can change its attributes at its own discretion (a prime example is a human, but not necessarily only them). — Astorre

I know of two cultures which have been claimed as thinking radically differently about being, presence and purpose in comparison with Western approaches. Heidegger singled out pre-Socratic thinkers like Heraclitus and Parmenides as understanding becoming in a fundamental way that was derailed when Socrates, Plato and Aristotle shifted the focus to beings, and truth as correctness, and Western thinking has followed suite ever since. It didnt matter to Heidegger whether a language like Russian was missing the present tense copula or not. What mattered was what kind of philosophical and religious literature was produced within Russian language without the copula. If the simple absence of the copula in a language predisposes their culture toward modes of thought which avoid the trap of fixing becoming into being, where is the evidence of this in the philosophical writings of Russia and other Slavic countries?

Robert Ziporyn, a translator of ancient Chinese texts, makes the claim that certain strains of Buddhism avoid fixing becoming. He associates this with their non-phonetic language and absence of copula, but derives his evidence from the content of the writings, not just their grammar.

I will call the claims of Heidegger about the pre-Socratics and Ziporyn about ancient Buddhism the nostalgic position. The nostalgic position asserts that some individual or culture in our distant past ‘got it right’ by arriving at a way of understanding the nature of things that we drifted away from for many centuries and are just now coming back to. So the latest and most advanced philosophical thinking of the West today is just a belated return to what was already discovered long ago.

I dont buy the nostalgic position. I think it is only when we interpret ancient thought in a superficial way that it appears their ideas were consonant with modern phenomenology and related approaches. Why are we so prone to misreading the ancients this way? I believe this comes from emphasizing only one aspect of their thought and ignoring the other, more significant dimension. Western philosophy after Hegel shifted its attention away from unchanging foundations and towards a discourse of evolution, revolution and becoming in which foundations become relative, contingent and impermanent. The primacy of the self-knowing ego and the purposefulness of the grasping will were put into question. Some of these philosophers took note of the fact that Buddhist scholars also talked about egolessness and non-willing.

But I want to argue that the most valuable consequence of the modern turn toward becoming was that it represented a further step in the evolution of Western thinking toward ways of understanding the world in terms of intricate relationships, harmonies, interconnections and correlations. This process necessarily had to start out with the belief in fixed objects and universal laws as a ground for seeing consistencies and stabilities in the world. My contention is that ancient buddhist thought is not post-Westen but pre-Western. Its view of change and becoming does not have room for the intricate interconnections that phenomenology and other contemporary philosophies describe within change.

The fact that I disagree with Heidegger concerning the significance and relevance of the pre-Socratics for his phenomenology doesn’t diminish my support for his ideas, and I am interested to see how your thinking relates to his, even if I don’t buy your nostalgia for older cultural-linguistic products.

I don't think it makes sense to talk about time in the first place unless something is already the same across the sequence. If there isn't already sameness, you just have wholly discrete being(s). The very ability to notice difference, for it to be conceptually present, requires that there also be sameness. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sameness, similarity, consistency and inferential
compatibility are important. The self-preservation of living things, scientific knowledge and agreement in ethical norms depend on it. The question is whether belief in pure self-identity over time furthers scientific progress and ethical understanding or inhibits it. When one begins from pure self-identity-identity, differences appear as necessarily arbitrary, violent. polarizing, oppositional. In treating the temporally unfolding repetition of a phenomenon in terms of absolutely equal sameness one misses the subtle , intricate shifts in sense of meaning which take place in every every moment of the repetition. Then, when one finally notices a qualitative difference, one’s noticing arrives too late. Having missed the intricacy of qualitative change underlying the assumed qualitative stasis, one is only attentive to the gross, abstractive contours of contradiction and violation.

Your metaphor of the film reel as a depiction of time falls within the conception of time as related to motion, on which the empirical measurement of time is based. An object in motion differs from itself over time by displacing itself in space. But the qualitative sense of the object supposedly does not change through the quantitative changes in spatial location. The accounts of time that I endorse assert that the qualitative sense of an object that we observe in motion does change. This doesn’t mean that it does not continue to be the same object. What it means is that to continue to be the same object is to refresh its contextual sense, significance and relevance.

For anything to have meaning requires two things. It requires that it present a new aspect, a new way of being alike and different from other events. And it requires that this novel feature be relevant. What this implies is that identity is not necessary for the perception of similarity, for anticipating what is to come, for predicting events empirically. On the contrary, pure identity is the death of sense and meaning. To hold something as self-identical is to make its meaning disappear. The constant appearance of our world as self-same from one moment to the next that the perceptual system makes possible is only achieved by continuous changes it makes in itself. For instance, to see an insert as unmoving requires continuous subtle rapid oscillations of the eye. Hold the eye completely still and the object vanishes. A color only appears as it is against contrasting colors. If the entire visual field becomes monochrome, the perception of the color as color disappears.

Try to measure the motion of a ball, and see if you can notice how, even as you dutifully maintain your attention to the task, the sense of the task, what interests you about it, how it feels to you are all in continuous motion. The mistake we make is to consider such shifts in sense as merely ‘subjective’ and extraneous to the meaning of the object as self-identical.

Sure, and like I said, this all feels a little bit like a tangential topic. — Leontiskos

Would you agree there’s an easy way to test whether it’s tangential? Namely by jumping back into the topic of the OP and seeing how long we last until we start talking past one another. I like to think I succeeded in not talking past Number2018 in my back and forth with him over his OP. My aim there was threefold.

1) to clarify the concepts of affect and rationality that he was employing by tracing them back to the references he provided( Massumi, Luhemann, Deleuze, Foucault).
2) to establish that there are other ways of interpreting Deleuze and Foucault in line with contemporary philosophical and psychological perspectives on the relation between affect and reason which integrates them more closely than his approach does .
3) To show the implications of this alternative approach for his account of wokism.

More simply, a philosophy forum is about deliberation, and we deliberate about that which we are conscious of, not what we are unconscious of. The only way that unconscious entities can be brought to bear within a deliberative philosophy forum is by first bringing them into consciousness. — Leontiskos

I only intended my reference to Deleuze and his notions of the unconscious and the pre-consciousness for Number2018, because Deleuze is important to his thinking, and he brought him into the discussion.

I don’t want my position to be misread as a claim that when we deliberate we may be blind to the true motives and meanings of what we are trying to reason about. For any ideas which are important to us, it is a mistake to say they are unconscious or that we are unaware of them. The challenge we often deal with is in articulating why and how they are important to us. If we disagree about an issue and then check to make sure we are not talking past one another, it is not always easy to tease out the contrast poles of our concepts. I know what I mean by concepts like justice and dignity, but can I locate their opposites? The opposite of dignity may not be the same for me as for you.

I can find all the words I am using in the same dictionary you use, but finding these words will not tell how each of us is using them. I am not by any means crossing off the possibility that two or more parties can come to agree on the same meanings of what is being discussed. This happens all the time , and allows all to come to consensus on what has been validated or invalidated through deliberation. But I suggest that the more philosophically, spiritually and ethically consequential the topic, the more likely it is that the participants will begin talking past each other, which is where the intransigence of presuppositions I discussed earlier becomes a barrier to consensus, not due to hidden or unconscious dynamics, but the limits of any given framework of intelligibility to assimilate elements outside its range of convenience. That’s when the hardest thing in the world to say should be said. Not ‘you’re wrong, biased, irrational, not paying attention’, but ‘wen are talking past one another because I apparently can’t make your understanding of the concepts involved coherent to me and you can’t make my use of those concepts coherent to you, so we’ll either try to locate some more general level of analysis wheren we can see eye to eye, or leave each other to their world.

I get the oddest responses from Wittgenstenians when I tell them that their activity is not being done for no reason at all - when I tell them that everyone acts for ends, themselves included. They tend to see themselves as eternally above the fray — Leontiskos

Richard Rorty made some interesting observations along these lines.

Wittgenstein writes as if his readers will find it obvious that thinkers like Descartes, Locke, Hegel, and Heidegger were victims of “the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language” (PI 109) rather than original thinkers who, by using words in new ways, broke new paths of inquiry. He has no interest in putting himself in the shoes of the great dead philosophers, nor in treating them as responsive to the intel­lectual and sociopolitical exigencies of particular times and places.

Exactly, which requires sameness and identity. Hence, the principles being equal (or even co-constituting, at least in the order of conception), or even three: actuality, potency, and privation. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Let’s talk about identity. What is the role of time for you in the determination of identity? In my way of thinking, identity requires temporal repetition. The first time, the emergence into unconcealment of something, is a difference. To emerge is to address a past within the moment of appearance. Think of a line or hinge. It subsists in a contrast, a before and after, an outside and inside, a then and a now. This is one moment of time. Wouldn’t there have to be a second moment in which that which emerges as a divide or hinge reproduces itself as itself? A=A implies temporal repetition, the turning back toward itself of what emerges, identity as pure self-affection and persistence, pure equality. Repeating identity is qualitative, categorical meaning. Calculation and measurement imply the persisting identity of the quality they iterate instance of. To deconstruct this concept of identity is to point out that each repetition of an emerging, appearing ‘something’ introduces alterity and new context ( this is what Derrida means by ‘there is nothing outside of the text’). Temporal repetition always alters what it reproduces in the apparent guise of ‘persisting identity’.

For Derrida, a would-be identity comes back to itself differently as the same . Derrida's notion of iterability is informed by a radical view of temporality he shares with Heidegger. The repetition of the same meaning intention one moment to the next is the fundamental origin of the contextual break, and our exposure to otherness. Iterability, as differance, would be an

"imperceptible difference. This exit from the identical into the same remains very slight, weighs nothing itself...(Derrida 1978)". “It is not necessary to imagine the death of the sender or of the receiver, to put the shopping list in one's pocket, or even to raise the pen above the paper in order to interrupt oneself for a moment. The break intervenes from the moment that there is a mark, at once. It is iterability itself, ..passing between the re- of the repeated and the re- of the repeating, traversing and transforming repetition.” (Derrida 1988). “Pure repetition, were it to change neither thing nor sign, carries with it an unlimited power of perversion and subversion.” (Derrida 1978)

Derrida's thinking here bears a remarkable resemblance to Heidegger's(1971a) insistence that identity is never simply present to itself, but differs from itself as the same.

“The same never coincides with the equal, not even in the empty indifferent oneness of what is merely identical...The same…is the belonging together of what differs, through a gathering by way of the difference. We can only say "the same" if we think difference.”

I was literally not arguing; how can I “disagree”!? And 3/4 of this discussion is y’all and Joshs bashing on about theories on how we approach things!

I see; sorry I wasted your time with all this. — Antony Nickles

I had a pretty good sense this was how your well-intended project was going to end. I consider you to be one of the rare few on this site who grasps the idea that what is at stake and at issue for a matter of concern is not something which can be treated separately from questions of empirical validity , of what is reasonable, rational and logical. Rather, such considerations form the very basis of intelligibility for judgements of fact. Armed with this knowledge, you hoped to steer the discussion of wokeness away from what is true, rational , reasonable and logical to a preliminary exploration of the different ways participants construe what is at stake and at issue, and then see what kind of consensus might arise from this hermeneutic exercise. To your apparent surprise and chagrin, your attempt to begin at a point prior to formed ideology and theory was accused of being biased in the direction of an already formed ideology which you were trying to shove down people’s throats. In a certain sense they have a point.

Let me explain. You rightly take from Wittgenstein the anchoring of sense in systems of intelligibility that he talks about in terms of language games, forms of life and hinges.
What Wittgenstein does not discuss is how difficult one should expect it to be to persuade another to change their way of looking at things. There is a difference between seeing that considerations of what is at stake and at issue (forms of life) form the very basis of intelligibility for judgements of what is reasonable, and getting other to arrive at that insight. You seem to be treating this understanding as some kind of common sense, as though all you had to do was explain what you had in mind in a few paragraphs and it would be immediately comprehended by other members of the thread.

I think this lack of attention to historical genesis is an important weakness in Wittgenstein’s thinking. What we see in the work of writers like Focault, Deleuze , Heidegger and Derrida is a depiction of what Wittgenstein calls form of life as ‘sticky’, intractable and resistant to transformation and persuasion. And they explain why this is so. The very stability of systems of intelligibility which allows us to make
sense of the world imbues them with a certain conservatism and resistance to change. This is why Foucault can talk about cultural knowledge epistemes lasting for centuries, and Heidegger can talk about the first beginning of philosophy ( traditional metaphysics of presence) and the other beginning (inaugurated by Heidegger’s own thinking), with the first beginning extending 2000 years from the Greeks to the modern era.
That’s right, the first beginning lasted 2000 years, and you were hoping to cause a philosophical shift in thinking in a matter of minutes! What you have been considering as merely the commonsensical preliminary to a discussion of wokism is the whole kit and kaboodle. If other members were prepared to grasp the orientation toward what is at stake and at issue that you have been trying to convey, the whole conversation would be unnecessary in the first place.

But the very intractability of participants’ orientations on this matter made your assumption that mutual understanding here was assured fooled from the start.

My strategy in such discussions is to assume that it will not be possible to attain mutual agreement on such fundamental philosophical matters if the starting point for participants (their form of life) is too distant from that of Wittgenstein’s and writers who overlap his thinking. My goal is instead to zero in on their orientations as intricately as possible such as to glimpse the outer boundaries of their way of thinking, that zone of intractability beyond which any attempts at persuasion on my part meet with a glassy eyed stare and/or outright hostility.

You complain that my contributions to the thread restricted themselves to debates over ‘theory’, as though what you were asking of the group didn’t itself require a major shift in their presuppositions butting up against that very zone of intractability. You really don’t see that if Leontiskos and Fire Ologist embrace theories of emotion which split affective phenomena off from rationality as potential disrupters and inhibitors of reason they are going to be in a position to embrace a notion of what matters and what is at issue that completely overcomes this split? I think you should take your own admonition to heart. If you really want to understand others’ ways of thinking and valuing, what matters and how and why it matters to them, the. you need to appreciate the enormous difficulties they may have in coming over to your way of seeing things.

When Joshs and frank debated whether change is possible without rest, I saw a fascinating, yet ultimately still an attempt to reduce the dynamic of "becoming" to two fundamental, "substantial" categories—rest and change. This is the search for the basic elements that constitute being — Astorre

Heidegger spent much time critiquing the change-rest dichotomy going back to the Greeks. It would seem to be the case that in order for there to be change, difference, transit, there must first be something (object, narrative, scheme, the ‘now' ) to undergo such processes. Something must first be what it is by appearing ‘at rest' in the present tense, before it can undergo transformation.

“In accordance with metaphysics, all beings, changeable and moved, mobile and mobilized, are represented from the perspective of a "being that is at rest," and this even where, as in Hegel and Nietzsche, "being" (the actuality of the actual) is thought as pure becoming and absolute movement.” (Heidegger 1998c)

Heidegger’s notion of “rest” breaks with the traditional metaphysical opposition between rest and change or being and becoming.In metaphysics (from Parmenides to Plato to Aristotle), “rest” implies immutability, permanence, in contrast to movement or change. Heidegger deconstructs this whole framework. He believes this dichotomy is itself a product of metaphysical thinking, which has covered over the more primordial experience of Being (Beyng).

Being and nothingness, presence and absence are thought through a sequential temporality of beings that come into presence, linger for a while and then vanish away. As Heidegger(2013) describes the ordinary concept of time,

“In asking after what happens, we have in mind a being, even when we name it a “becoming” and attend only to its arising, approaching and decaying.” “This passing away is conceived more precisely as the successive flowing away of the "now" out of the "not yet now" into the "no longer now."… Time persists, consists in passing. It is, in that it constantly is not. This is the representational idea of time that characterizes the concept of time which is standard throughout the metaphysics of the West...”(Heidegger 1968)

Could you explain to me how your perspective differs from Heidegger’s here?

And even when Joshs spoke about Heidegger, who, as he correctly noted, grounded "is" in the event of "unfolding," this was, in essence, an effort to find that very first principle, that "root" of our being. — Astorre

When Heidegger says that unconcealment is primary, he doesn’t mean that it is a principle, a substance, a category, a subject or object. That unconcealment is first doesn’t mean it is first in time, but that notions like subject and object, rest and change are derivative modes of unconcealment.

if we consider what is happening in modern ontology (Object-Oriented Ontology or correlationism) and science (the constant refinement of AI, which is increasingly used as a weapon rather than a friend and assistant, and which is developing at an incredible speed), a doubt arises: is this train heading in the right direction, or is it a direction where there will be no room for the subject? — Astorre

So you want to leave room for the subject? I’d love to see how you do this without falling into the sort of metaphysical assumptions that Heidegger critiqued as associated with the modern thinking of subjectivity.

First, I'll just point out that I think it's a mistake to conflate "emancipatory" with "critical theory" and "definitely not post-modern." Even in less explicitly activist texts, the "free rollicking of thought," the opening of "new lines of thought," or the deconstruction of systems so that new ways of thought and action can come into being are often presented as desirable in themselves.

The freedom of thought, an increase in potentialities available, of lines of action and thought, are themselves only good as a means of reaching choiceworthy ends, better means to those ends, etc. Greater potentiality is, of itself, not actually emancipatory nor is it desirable. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Right , one needs to find a criterion on the basis of which way of being is preferable to another, more desirable.

The fact that we are concatenations and flows of values and desire means that no one can stand outside of some stance or other to judge from on high, including the philosopher who writes about such flows. They are not a neutral observer but are writing always from within context , within history, within perspective. There is no perspective which doesn’t already have a stake in what matters and how it matters, but this doesn’t prevent one from talking about it from within one’s relation of care and relevance to the world.

Right, but then this is also taken as a reason for bracketing out or eschewing moral judgement. It's that line of reasoning I find faulty. Consider that Socrates does not need to "step outside his humanity" to judge, universally, that "all men are mortal." He can do this just fine while remaining a man. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Let’s examine two ‘postmodern’ models. According to one, ethical and empirical progress are united, based on the same criterion, optimal anticipatory sense-making. According to another, there can be no such overarching vector of historical progress since the criterion changes along with the social structure. However, there is local progress. One initially finds oneself ensconced within a particular set of cultural norms ( ethical, empirical). These norms inform one about what ethically desirable and what is to be rejected. Eventually, cultural change shifts perspectives on the criteria of ethical norms, and one now disapproves of the previous conventions while embracing the new ones. This process of establishing, living within and overcoming criteria of ethical desirability repeats itself endlessly without any over progress. You may want to call each of these totalitarian, but such totalitarianism will never be used as weapon against your belief in moral and empirical foundations. In the first case cultural progress is subsuming. Each formation of knowledge and ethics is equally valid, and there is no justification for coercing a change in beliefs from an external vantage. In the second case as well , persuasion substitutes for coercion. In both case ma there would be no wokist breathing down your back and policing your language. Your concerns about these models’ totalitarianism would have to restrict itself to the complaint that they eschew punishment, condemnation and coercion against those believe are unjust.

They are relativist to a point.

Yes, it varies, but they do seem to tend towards various forms of anti-realism as well, including historical anti-realism. I think you are selling short the level of commitment here. One of the things right-wing media made the most hay over was straightforward pronouncements of the relativism and anti-realism coming out of activist circles.

My general impression is that, broadly speaking, the median Woke position is simply contradictory. It is morally and epistemically anti-realist and strongly relativistic, while at the same time being absolutist. This is, in many cases, an unresolved, and perhaps often unacknowledged contradiction. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Is their position contradictory, or are you failing to appreciate that there can be forms of realism? As you pointed out, anti-realism is not opposed to totalitarianism or absolutism. That was Rouse’s point about social constructionists being semantic realists. You can try and pathologize them if you want by claiming that at bottom they just desire power for power’s sake, but I think that would be utterly missing their motivation, which is not power but moral truth.

What I describe is not very clear, even to me, but I think it is more clear than what I see you describing of Deluze (who I’ve read a little) and Witt (read a bit more). I see carts and horses being moved around, but not much clarity regarding independent circuits being identified. — Fire Ologist

Maybe the views of two prominent researchers on affect will be a little clearer. Robert Solomon’s book Not Passion’s Slave argues against the traditional view (especially David Hume’s) that emotions are irrational impulses that control us, and that reason is merely a tool used to fulfill emotional desires. Instead, he claims that emotions are forms of judgment: They aren’t just feelings or reactions; they involve interpretation, appraisal, and meaning. Emotions are structured by reasoning: For example, fear usually involves a belief that something is dangerous. These beliefs can be questioned and corrected. Reason and emotion work together. Rather than being enemies, Solomon says emotions are intelligent and reflective; you can reason about your emotions and emotions can involve reasoning. Emotions are not irrational forces. They’re ways of seeing and making sense of the world, shaped by and open to rational reflection.

For Matthew Ratcliffe, emotions are not just about things in the world (like fear of a dog) but are about our whole way of experiencing the world. He calls these “existential feelings; they shape our sense of possibility, reality, and self. Rather than being just cognitive judgments, emotions structure our background sense of meaning, making some things feel possible, hopeful, threatening, or hopeless before we even articulate them. Emotions are not just ways of thinking or judging, they are pre-reflective ways of being in the world, shaping how things matter to us. This view is closer to that of Deleuze and Wittgenstein than it is to Solomon.

Affect cannot influence rationality from below
— Joshs

Is this a reframing of the source of error? Or are we moving away from error making? In which case we are drifting from our thesis it seems. — Fire Ologist

I am engaged in a dispute with Number2018 over what writers like Deleuze, Wittgenstein (where Antony’s perspective comes from) and Foucault mean by affect and how it relates to reason. These thinkers assert that error is not the result of any ‘distorting’ effect of affect on reason. A system of logical assertions gets its sense from a way of looking at the world, a perspective which is not itself either logical or illogical, correct or incorrect. Only the particulars organized within a perspective can be correct or incorrect error.

Your position, like that of Leontiskos, harks back to an older way of thinking about this relation, wherein emotion and reason run on partially independent circuits, and emotion can distort or inhibit rational processes of thinking.

It looks like you view affect primarily as a disruptive or distorting force — Number2018

Affect is simply the differences ( affecting and affected), the partial objects, the building materials, the working parts of machinic assemblages. It’s not the parts which by themselves disrupt or repress, it’s how they are organized. The parts can assemble themselves in ways that resist their own transformation, they can assemble themselves in ways that deterritorialize in a revolutionary manner, but I don’t know what it would mean to say that they can ‘distort’ themselves. Distortion implies a proper configuration, and there would be no fixed basis for the proper here.

Hannah Arendt offered a remarkable account of Eichmann. However, it is not quite accurate to describe him as irrational—he was, in fact, following the bureaucratic logic of the Nazi regime. Most likely, his most consequential decision was joining the Nazi party. From that point on, he became a thoughtless functionary. But that pivotal decision was made at a more subtle level, shaped by unconscious affective forces rather than deliberate reasoning. — Number2018

I’m going to offer my take on how Deleuze would analyze Eichmann’s situation, then present a Wittgensteinian perspective that I think is consonant with Antony’s. I will then contrast these with how you are relating the role of affectivity and rationality in Eichmann’s behavior. In AO Deleuze distinguishes between investment in pre-conscious interests and unconscious desires. Pre-conscious interests guide and organize what matters and how it matters. With regard to political movements, the former lead to reactionary and reformist actions, and the latter to revolutionary change. If one continues to draw one thinking from such pre-conscious interests, one will remain within a status quo even as one attempts to makes changes within itself. The unconscious however is transformative
change in thinking, opening up lines of flight which alter what is at issue, what matters and how it matters. Only such thinking can be truly revolutionary. No amount of deliberative reasoning can accomplish this, since all deliberative thinking is already enslaved to pre-assigned interests. Deliberative rationality is in service of the reigning norms.

For Deleuze, whether Eichmann was an enthusiastic supporter of Nazi ideology or andisinterested bureaucrat the diagnosis is the same. Eichmann was ensconced within a social collectivity in such a way as to validate the most extensive rational deliberation he might attempt to justify his actions.

A Wittgenstein account has many parallels with Deleuze’s. Eichmann’s work duties amounted to a network of language games authorized by a form of life which made his work life intelligible to him both practically and ethically. These languages games and this form of life are intrinsically affective in the sense that they are only formed and only sustain themselves through continuously inter-affecting between persons. Affect cannot influence rationality from below as some autonomous domain (contra Massumi). Instead it is the elements of the system of meaning (perspective) that is a way of life. We cannot change affect separately from perspective , since they are the same thing. Wittgenstein’s concern with regard to Eichmann would be how he might be persuaded to look at his situation and that of others living alongside him (the jews) differently. Not do a better job of rational deliberation, but find a way to turn those rational schemes on their head through a change in affective orientation

Your reading of affect seems to differ from these accounts by treating affect, as Massumi does, as not just primary but autonomous. It seems to want to sever the dependence of knowledge on affect and value, as though affect can distort or inhibit rhe process of reasoned deliberation, and as though there could be a progress in logical , rational deliberation that was not at every point made intelligible in its very sense and meaning in an affective manner. Your Eichmann and your wokists are victims of this strife between affect and reason.

Leontikos articulates this strife well:

Eichmann's reason became a slave to his passions, at least if we see Nazism as part of his passions. So Eichmann was involved in a lot of thought and reasoning about how to further his goal of Nazism, but in another sense he was being thoughtless and irrational. — Leontiskos