The absolute flow is hard to comment on because it's hard to understand – few people have 'real ideas' in their lives, and I think this is one of them. In any case Hagglund's commentary here is mere incredulity and dismissal, which whatever you think of the notion, is not going to cut it.

I had thought at some point that the pre-temporal names of retention and protention were in fact ethical names, like worry (apprehension) and satiation, or taking for granted. The temporalizing of what is 'done' and what is 'yet to come' – you know the old thought experiments where you wake up in the hospital and hope the painful operation is over rather than about to start, even though both options leave you suffering the same amount 'in the end.' So this line of thought would go, time is the product of pain, and an attempt to unseat it by allowing it to be deferred. Husserl was in my opinion not properly sensitive to the phenomenology of pain and so could not articulate this.

I get, of course - and Derrida even mentions it - that this is meant to serve as a bulwark against Brentano, but once you turn the living present into a sheer continuum, you're basically faced with the opposite problem: how then to 'introduce' representation into it? The charge of course is that Husserl basically slips it in under the table, hoping that it'll go unnoticed. The living present shades off, and then all of a sudden, at some unspecified - unspecifiable!, in principle - point, boom, you have representation. — StreetlightX

I don't understand what you mean. The perception does not 'turn into' representation at its far end. Representation is going to be things like secondary memory and fantasy, which are not a function of this shading off, but have to be introduced by separate noetic acts (primary memory does not 'become' secondary memory at its far end, and fantasy has to be deliberately introduced by new acts of imagination).

Here, as I see it, is 'the problem.' One of Husserl's primary concerns in his account of time-consciousness is to demonstrate that perception is not confined to the present. This simply does not square with Derrida's portrayal of Husserl in this chapter, and while Derrida seems to be aware that his exegesis doesn't make complete sense, he fumbles over the point unconvincingly.

I'm not sure exactly what the context of that quote was, but one of the main theses of the Internal Time Consciousness lectures was to refute the psychological picture, apotheosized in Brentano, that the immediate past was representational or phantasical as opposed to perceptive or intuitive. Given that this was one of Husserl's primary and overriding concerns, and one of the main developments in his account of time consciousness, I'd have to know in what sense 'opposite' is meant here, for it to be capable of standing on equal footing with its antithesis.

Consider one possibility. We schematize the living present as a line:

R <-------- x --------> P

R is retention, P is protention, and x is the primal impression. Now, in this schematization, R and P can be seen in a way as 'opposites' of x; they are at the poles of that which x is at the center of. But this in no way means that they are simply external to perception, only that, as Husserl himself insists, both are intuitive and shade off into non-perception. One could very well read the Time Consciousness Lectures as a rebuttal of a kind of 'psychology of presence' in this vein.

I'm not trying to say that Husserl's thought has no tensions on this score, but this segment really shocked me with the way the argument was carried out. I feel like if I wrote this I would be crossing my fingers that no one read it too closely.

Edit: Apparently there is no citation for the quote, or for the one preceding it. Unfortunate. I feel like re-reading the Time Consciousness lectures would be helpful here.

Then why is it so crucial for Derrida to overturn Husserl's own insistence here? Clearly Husserl believes in some sort of primacy of the primal impression, but nonetheless takes retention and protention to be perceptual and intuitive. They depend on one another, and shade off into non-perception at their edges, with some ambivalence as to how this terminology should be adequately arranged.

Now, given all this, where are the teeth left in the criticism? Suppose that we can, as Husserl insists, perceive the past, and so Derrida's insistence that perception is strictly the form of the present (segun Husserl) is wrong in the strong sense he has maintained it so far. Suppose further, as he also insists, that non-perception lies at the end of protention and retention as a continuum. Given this picture, what is the appeal of placing Husserl within a 'metaphysics of presence?'

That picture is not representative of Chalmers' style, which is a shame, because he has one of my favorite 'philosopher looks.'

To illustrate this as concretely as possible, here is Derrida on p. 55 (my bold, his italics):

We see very quickly then that the presence of the perceived present is able to appear as such only insofar as it is in continuous composition with a non-presence and a non-perception, namely, primary memory and primary anticipation (retention and protention).

This is, in a way, the whole point of this chapter. But look at the bolded: Husserl denies that retention and protention are non-perceptions, this is the whole point. Derrida is punning here or making use of what he takes to be a pre-established conclusion: that perception must be presence in the strict sense of not belonging to the past or future, which retention and protention in some sense do. But there is a weird circle going on here. Husserl is prey to the metaphysics of presence because he takes all originary consciousness to be presentation, as opposed to representation, and all presentation is presence because he takes only the presence and not the past or future to be presentation proper, which we see because retention and protention can't be perception because...they're past and present?! Which was to be proved? This just does not add up.

So what is Derrida's response to this difficulty? We continue:

These non-perceptions are not added on, do not accompany contingently the actually perceived now [again, these are non-perceptions, and not actually perceived - TGW]; indispensibly and essentially they participate in its possibility. No doubt Husserl says that retention is still a perception.

Here Derrida admits his contention is against the letter of Husserl's text. So how will he save his interpretation?

But it is the absolutely unique case–Husserl has never spoken of another–of a perception whose perceived is not a present but a past as the modification of the present"

But this is no answer, surely? We can disregard Husserl from speaking of the past as perceived, because in all other cases that don't have to do with perceiving the past he only speaks of the present as being perceived? Shouldn't it be precisely in the case of retention, i.e. the past, where Husserl speaks of the past as being perceived? Where else would he, or could he, speak of it in such a way?

Derrida then goes on to quote passages in which Husserl seems to equate the shading of the primal impression into retention with the shading of perception into non-perception. But I just don't understand – how in the world do these quoted passages not straightforwardly demonstrate that Derrida is mistaken in thinking Husserl can be fitted into his characterization of the metaphysics of presence? The quotations have an air of triumph, but they sound like he is shooting himself in the foot to me.

My biggest puzzlement with this chapter, before more substantial commentary: the argument here explicitly depends on Derrida not taking Husserl at his word, which is in sharp contrast with the close reading strategy we've seen up til now. Husserl says that the past is given in originary perception, but if he's serious, this undermines Derrida's whole point, since for Derrida's criticism of Husserl to go through, it must be that all originary perception, and so the principle of principles, must be confined to the present, and so cannot have anything non-punctual related to it. But this is precisely what Husserl denies in insisting that retention is not re-repsentation, but presentation!

So the rhetorical strategy here is extremely odd. We are to criticize Husserl for a metaphysics of presence which, on the most straightforward reading of his account of time-consciousness, he explicitly denies. Now Derrida notes this trouble and tries to garner textual support for why Husserl can't seriously mean what he says here. But is it really convincing? Why not hold, as Husserl says he does, that the past itself belongs through retention to originary perception, and so undermine Derrida's entire claim to presentation being dependent on re-presentation? If the past is 'present' in this way, then the fact that retention and the primal impression are co-constututive simply does not get Derrida what he wants.

The point is just that Derrida's reading of Husserl must take on a different tone for this to work. It cannot be simply that we are digging Husserl's commitments out of his own words: we must now in some sense go beyond them, to find a hidden tension and extract from it something that Husserl would deny is even his position, not because some contradiciton contrary to his intention had been found, but because we have somehow psychoanalyzed him and told him that he did not really mean what he said to begin with. This is a very different strategy, and in my opinion a much less convincing one.

(Also note there is a sly rhetorical move here, which under its strongest interpretation might even be construed as fallacious: that because the present depends on the past, we can therefore say that it is the past or the repetition which must have priority. This of course does not follow, because it overlooks co-constituting or equiprimordiality, which seems to be what Husserl is getting at with his notion of horizontal intentionality; but he does also in some way seem to want to privilege the primal impression as the true present of the present. Also, it is unclear how serious Derrida is to committing to this reversal, rather that breaking down the distinction that makes any privileging of one over the other possible).

If you're not here to talk to things at least tangentially related to V&P, take it to another thread or PM.

Universality and objectivity require intersubjectivity, and the ability to constitute others and relay the results of observation. This requires a commonality to the extent this can be transmitted, but makes no assumption of universal faculties and holds out the eventual possibility even for communion with animals. Husserl's mature position was that each person must treat themselves as the standard and act as if every other were deficient with respect to them, with the differences to be washed out where needed and preserved where needed.

This is not an assumption of phenomenology.

OK, halfway mark, Chapter 5 tomorrow, on everyone's favorite, time consciousness. Moliere, let us know if you are still willing to summarize.

I think continental philosophers have more insightful things to say about culture, art (& spirituality, tho they code it) than do analytic philosophers. There were so many moments for me, in college, reading Deleuze and just being like Yes! - things I'd felt, but didn't know how to express, and hadn't seen anyone express elsewhere. He made me feel much less alone. Recently, I've been having that same experience with Peter Sloterdijk. Derrida has always been one of my least favorite continentals precisely because I don't get any of that from him. I've never had one of those 'aha!' moments with him. Reading him has been fun, if infuriating, but it hasn't really deepened my interest in his work, tbh (tho it has deepened my interest in Husserl.) — csalisbury

Interesting. I've always enjoyed experiencing art or participating in spirituality, but have never really enjoyed commentary on them that much. Some of the things Henry has said about seeing the invisible in visual art or that Schop. has said about the sublime resonated with me, but only because they said things I already knew from appreciating art to begin with.

Derrida is hard for me because I sort of 'see' what the rhetorical strategy is supposed to be, but it never really gets into my stomach.

I really love the formal semantic tradition in analytic philosophy, actually (which Witti is a part of), to the extent that I don't mind reading endless boring exegesis about it and learning little technical quirks and solving puzzles. I do feel a deep fondness for it, and for the beauty of the work of someone like Richard Montague (this beauty, I think, comes from the fact that semantics is one of those places where mathematics and empirical science blur, making it both real and formal). But there I feel like it's an engineering thing, doing cool things with mathematical models. I'm not sure what continental philosophy is for, except, as you say, being a bulwark of self-perpetuating Jesuitism (Freud and Marx will simply not stop being cited, ever, I guess). Maybe reading, and reading, and reading engenders its own kind of fun, because you can make notes in the margin and read some more. But then, I can't help but think that the fixation on words is a result of not knowing anything else. And the works that I personally have felt drawn to read again have been actually religious, not just substitute-religious, or old.

(also, there's a shiny well-regarded and romantic kind of madness, and the mundane sort of mental illness that makes you unable to eat right and hear intrusive voices, nothing romantic about the latter).

Yeah, the invocation of the Muses is interesting. I do believe in the Muses, and I'm even for going back to ingenuously thanking them before a written work with a disclaimer that nothing I think is good enough to publish is truly my own, but was given to me freely by quasi-divine powers. But inspiration is close to madness, and it's more invigorating and interesting than the sort of tedious schizophrenic deferral and linguistic games that are at play in these sorts of descriptions SX is citing. I just feel like, I don't know, maybe continental philosophers really do live like this, maybe their whole life is a dumb frenetic language game, which strikes me as sad and irritating, but different strokes.

Certainly something sad about Derrida has emerged over the course of reading V&P. Not in a condescending way, but I really am starting to empathize with him the more times I read the chapters. He seems like a sad person.

Sure, but none of this goes anywhere toward justifying the kinds of sweeping claims you're praising MP or Derrida for, and which are still a bad description of even the most basic experiences. Sometimes I dialogue with myself. Sometimes words seem to flit by. It's not about thinking the inner voice ought to be some way, but rather that philosophers have a vested interest in taking some aspect of it that they think will be congenial to their project and blowing it up ludicrously. So for me it is an interesting psychological and sociological question how it is people come to write such things – how people like Hume, or Derrida, come to believe things that are not only so false, but so obviously false. This has to do with the effect philosophical stakes can have on people.

And I think the folk are wiser on this subject. Continental philosophers have, in my experience, never taught me anything important about personal identity, with the exception of Husserl, who in truth belongs to an earlier era (he is like the legendary band that inspires the colorless clones). And I do not brush off their texts, but struggle with them ingenuously, nor do I think any special philosophical incompetence keeps me from understanding them. So there must be some explanation as to why either their texts are so devoid of insight, or that insight is especially closed to me for some reason. I sometimes just cannot believe MP is serious. He's ridiculous. He writes like a clown.

"As to how I inhabit my own inner speech, I am probably more accurately described as talking with myself rather than to myself. A great deal of what goes on in the head consists of an agitated running self-interrogation; ‘What did I just come into this room to get? Oh, I know, I probably left my cup of coffee in here, it’ll be cold by now. No, no, I had to telephone someone, but who was it?’ That is, there is an internal dialogue, but in these exchanges I appear to occupy both sides of it, and there is no one heavily weighted side to my garrulous split self. — StreetlightX

I don't know, I'm not schizophrenic. Maybe schizophrenic people think like this, but I do not. I do explicitly carry on dialogue with myself at times, but this is not the normal mode of my inner speech at all, but a dialectical tactic. I'm not Gollum.

Words race across me in polyphonic brigades, constantly swollen by the forces of more inrushing voices, and I can put up only a rear-guard censoring action. But this impression is no fully blown hallucination, for again there is no disowning and projecting of my inner voice, only my feeling of becoming a vehicle for words from elsewhere, much as a ventriloquist’s dummy or doll is made to speak vicariously. The real speaker’s, the ventriloquist’s voice, is thrown as if to issue from the passive doll, seemingly animating it. But the person who is the terrain of imperative inner speech, whether of love or hate or some other force, herself becomes the theatre for the performer and the puppet alike. The performer here is the arch-ventriloquist, language". — StreetlightX

This sounds like a description of a mental illness to me. I had a friend who was convinced he channeled demons, and it seems like something he would say.

Part of my interest in this is how much of philosophy, and philosophical pronouncement, is affectation. In my opinion the continental tradition is especially prone to affectation, whereas analytic philosophers are more prone to stifling.

The choices, in my experience, warp around a core, and what surprises me as the years pass is how little what happens to me changes me, and how much I see in stages manifestations of the same old self in different clothing. Even traumatic things, I understand that I react to them in certain ways and they result not in a new person but reflect the one who was traumatized. Part of it is, having lived longer, I can now recognize myself more easily, and so I am becoming increasingly sympathetic to perennial rationalist truisms, and less impressed by their historical dissidents (empiricism, Buddhism, analyticism, continentalism), which seem by comparison like passing fads, and built on promises (of scientific advance, ending suffering, solving aporia) rather than being philosophies organic from life as lived. I want to see myself as I am, not as I wish I would be.

I agree, but I don't see any reason to believe that those inherited forms privilege language or gesture in any interesting way. Even trying to conceptualize what that would be like is difficult. I imagine myself playing a text adventure game or Dance Dance Revolution; a caricature of living.

My inherited forms seem to me something more like a soul or personality, a memory in every novelty, which is refracted through a prism that is 'me.' In other words, I just can't agree with Hume: when I look into myself I do find myself, and his description seems to be one of someone who is very, very high looking through a kaleidoscope. Furthermore, my skepticism toward these positions increases insofar as I am attending to how I actually live, and decreases insofar as I am attendant to resolving aporia in the philosophy literature.

Okay. All I am saying is that I don't see anything of thought as I actually live through it in these accounts. It sounds like an alien who lives a very different life from me describing the way they think, because I don't think that way. The folk description of thought and inner life is much more accurate.

I don't think my inner life is primary, merely that it is primary for me. And that it is distinct from my outer life and not reducible to it, or to gestures and language, and the majority of it is incommunicable.

I think I agree, all I am saying is that sometimes the way you are wording it makes it seem as if there's first an imagination of a word, and then a representation of that imagination. What I'm saying is that's one level removed, and the text treats the imagination as the representation to begin with (of the actual use of the speech in communication).

What I believe is relevant at this point is the distinction between the real act of imagining words, and the representation of this, "speaking to oneself". — Metaphysician Undercover

I think it is the difference between a real communicative linguistic act and an imagination of this (which is the representation). Not a a representation of the imagination, which goes one level too far.

Derrida then proceeds to talk about the "actual" practise of language, but as far as I can tell, this is a reversal of Husserl's position. Husserl has exposed something, imagining words, which is actually not a practise of language, it is only represented as a practise of language, "speaking to oneself" and Derrida now treats this as if it is an actual practise of using language, and proceeds with his argument. Now I really do not see how it is claimed that we cannot distinguish between this thing, imagining words, and the representation of it "speaking to oneself", such that we would believe that the thing represented, imagining words, is an actual practise of language. — Metaphysician Undercover

But yeah, this sounds right. We need to understand what it is about linguistic signs that makes Derrida think their being used, and imagination of their usage, collapses.

I agree with that as far as writing fiction as a genre. I thought the focus was on fiction in the sense of imagining speech (whether the imaginary speech is intended to be fictional or non-fictional in genre).

I feel like I almost get it, but it's just not clicking for me. Isn't Husserl going to agree the ideal function is retained in imagination? Isn't that the point of doing expressive exercises in soliloquy? What would be a problem is if language's indicative functions follow Husserl into soliloquy. So Derrida's move requires something more radical – linguistic signs always have the same functions, imagined or not: actual linguistic use is 'representative' as much as supposedly 'representational' (imagined) use is actual. You can't 'imagine' a discourse because to imagine it is just to have it.

I reread Chapter 4 this afternoon and don't really understand any better. The point about language use in imagination and actuality collapsing because it is representative equally in each case, and that the distinction between reality and representation breaks down there, is on the cusp of making some kind of sense, but I still just can't see why language is supposed to be shot through with fiction, or however you want to put it.

The tensions between being as ideality (infinite repeatability) and presence (full presence with no need for repetition) makes a little more sense, though I now agree with you that the reference to mortality could only be plausible for the end of the form of the present in general, not for me personally. Though maybe since the form of the present is linked to the transcendental ego, Derrida is hinting at the deeper foundation of the form of 'now' within myself.

What tricks us here, what makes us believe in a thought that could exist for itself prior to expression, are the already constituted and already expressed thoughts that we can silently recall to ourselves and by which we give ourselves the illusion of an inner life. — StreetlightX

Out of curiosity, do you believe this? It seems like it can give you a sort of theoretical elegance, especially if, like MP, and Derrida, you want thought and experience to have a structuralist flavor (and MP's increasing dependence on structuralism is a little questionable). But it seems to be straightforwardly wrong phenomenologically, and no insisting on the contrary is really going to help.

Why is it considered such a philosophical virtue to everywhere deflate or otherwise 'expose' the notion of something being inner? Is it because philosophers only know how to deal with the external?

I see the pull of the idea that a sign's function is carried out in full whether any actual tokening of the sign exists, and that even an imaginary sign defers to a symbolic system in the same way it does in actual communication. I'm still a little shaky on what this means or how it corrupts all expression with indication, unless the point is something like 'a sign always indicates the symbolic system it belongs to and all of its other possible uses' which doesn't seem right.

J.N. Findlay was an OLP guy and some-time devotee of Wittgenstein who renegaded hard and disavowed the whole philosophy, turning to classical idealism and mysticism instead. He claims to have mediated deeply and seriously on the Tractatus, and on the person of Wittgenstein, and come to the conclusion that he was a literal solipsist, and that in his presence you could 'feel' his solipsism, that Wittgenstein took the man LW to be a kind of avatar of Yahweh the transcendental ego, and that he was polite to other people in the way a deity was polite to satellites. Wittgenstein clearly had a deep sense of being alone, and it seems like many observers do conclude that he is not quite human, but something more: he has a status in analytic philosophy of a sort of saint, which no other philosopher (not Russell, Frege, Carnap...) has. To claim that something is Wittgensteinian is to show it to be worthy of praise without argument (indeed the argument is over who is more Wittgensteinian), and in my university there are several dozen sponsored workshops, with only one being devoted to an individual (not Marx, but Wittgenstein). Whether he was actually as much as people have the impression he was, it seems indubitable that part of his loneliness was an inability to speak to other people, and part of this came from being able to think of things that other people could not understand. (Note that he speaks of 'one person' understanding the Tractatus in the preface).

Maybe the reason I'm not that surprised by this is that I think I can and have done it? Whether or not this ability is independently mysterious, it seems to me I can in soliloquy describe what I see with a self-present intention in such a way that I'm not really 'telling myself' anything at all in the sense of giving myself new information I didn't know or intimating my own thoughts to myself, but just expressing what something is in silent words appropriate to a perception. And I think in doing so, yeah, I can 'see' what the words mean, which perceptions they'd be appropriate to and which not, and so on. It seems commonplace to me.

It's not entirely clear. Husserl thinks that there's a sense in which perception is primary presentation, and imagination, memory, etc. are secondary, hence re-presentation. So it's reproductive without actually having to reproduce some really perceived thing – every fantasy is (merely) a fantasy of some conceivable perception. And of course there's the decreased vivacity, the need for the imaginer to actively keep the fantasy in existence.

I may just be more sympathetic to Husserl, but I don't find expression more mysterious than indication. It's linguistic meaning capable of taking part in logical relations, as intended by some agent. The soliloquy example itself also doesn't seem strange to me, although it's a separate question how strange it is after Derrida's criticism, viz. that imaginary and actual uses of language are both equally indicative.

MU, imagination is representative not in the sense that it has to depict some real thing, but in the sense that for Husserl it's derivative of perception, which is presentation proper. Imagination and fiction aren't just ideal: when fantasizing, there's a concrete act going on as well, and a particular fantasied object. We can perceive idealities by extracting them both from perception and from fantasy.

Pomo is for attracting mates.

Yes and no, and Derrida talks a little bit about this. On the one hand, phenomenology is opposed to traditional metaphysics (and some phenomenologists oppose it to 'ontology,' which they take themselves to be doing), because of methodological inadequacy. But on the other hand, Husserl took himself to be doing genuine metaphysics, and so only opposed to metaphysics in the true sense insofar as the old metaphysics was false metaphysics.

And yeah, showing that phenomenology at its core is part of the same tradition it's trying to disavow is one of Derrida's main goals.

So to answer your question, without further delay: no, I never learned-to-live. Absolutely not! Learning to live ought to mean learning to die - to acknowledge, to accept, an absolute mortality - without positive outcome, or resurrection, or redemption, for oneself or for anyone else. That has been the old philosophical injunction since Plato: to be a philosopher is to learn how to die. I believe in this truth without giving myself over to it. Less and less in fact. I have not learned to accept death. We are all survivors on deferral ...

The question of survival or deferral ... has always haunted me, literally, every moment of my life, tangibly, unrelentingly ... I have always been interested in the subject of survival, the meaning of which is not supplemental to life or death. It is originary: life is survival. Survival in the conventional sense of the term means to continue to live, but also to live after death. All the ideas that have helped me in my work, notably those regarding the trace or the spectral, were related to the idea of "survival" as a basic dimension. It does not derive from either to live or to die. No more than what I call "originary mourning." It is something that does not wait for so-called "actual" death." — StreetlightX

Wow, that's...frank. I mean, I don't find it moving. But it's frank. It reminds me of a lot of old epigrams about being too afraid to live or die.

if one wants to shift things to an existential-psychoanalytic register, in the same way Derrida might say Husserl is evading death ( by insisting on a presence that always underlies signification), one could also say that Derrida is evading trauma (by insisting that signification is always co-originary - so there's always something mediating, making sure the traumatic scene is never fully present.) — csalisbury

Yeah, I've always thought this regarding secondary presentations of Derrida. There's comfort in knowing something can be infinitely deferred.

I'm not sure what to think about Husserl on the subject anymore. The absolute flow is a mind-boggling concept, very deep and very hard to fathom, as is the notion of horizontal intentionality. But I've become more skeptical over time of the notions of protention and retention. I think they might be remnants of the natural attitude which linearizes time, and they may not be real. If they aren't, that takes some wind out of Derrida's sails.

From what I've read, Chapter 5 is the most important. It also seems to me to contain the decisive point at which Derrida has to choose a reading of Husserl, and is the only time in the work where Derrida does not take Husserl's text at its word, and makes an argument that crucially relies on a claim that he can't possibly have meant what he said. From what I have read, the crux of the whole work seems to be here, on this decision. I think the whole thing would have been easier to understand and maybe more effective if he began with time-consciousness rather than expression. But that is with an incomplete understanding of the work. I don't know why the language stuff is arranged in quite this way.

One of the reasons linguistics interests me is that I think that it's a window into folk ontology, and that once we have deeper semantic models of natural language, deeper models of the way we view ontology (insofar as it's spoken of, which is really the only time ontology occurs IMO) will fall out for free. Just as an example, you can model tense in natural language pretty well with a dense, linear timeline. Reductively, this is 'why' people believe time is linear (quotes here because there's no commitment to directionality here, as if people's notion of time influences the language or vice-versa, and I don't think it matters). The same goes for substance and atomistic notions of individuals, divorced from their properties and the world – it turns out you can model language that way and it works.

The notions that the early positivists had were on the right track, but I think were off for a couple reasons. First, they just didn't have the tools to study language very well. Second, they thought that things were 'bewitchments' of language in some sense, and thought this could be overcome either by abandoning ordinary language in favor of artificial language, or fanatically restricting themselves to some (ironically artificial) subset of ordinary language. The problem, as I see it, is not that there is some arena you need to escape to to undo the bewitchment, but that all life is bewitchment, there's no real realm behind it, and a kind of linguistic neo-positivism or mirror-image positivism can untangle this and provide a sort of therapy, deeper than what traditional philosophy has allowed because of our limited empirical scope and lack of formal tools. The point, then, is not to build an ontology as a spiritual exercise, but to lay bare the ontology we commit ourselves to in talking, and as a result to take it less seriously once it's understood where these things come from.

I see Wittgenstein as attempting therapy in this sense, and there is something non-trivial about his discovery of the way a first-order language can create a complete, enclosed ontology, and then you can point the way to escape from it into the ineffable which isn't trapped inside the circle. It is lonely, but I don't think it's a futile effort. It's just that while Wittgenstein was trying to overcome this in one stroke of genius, what's needed instead is a gentle, subtle, and patient unwinding of the world and ultimately the death of ontology, which takes place over generations and generations. I take this task to have been making extremely slow progress for thousands of years. Wittgenstein's problem was simply that he took the matter too personally.