Oh, ok, I didn't think of that as a query but I can see how that's one way to look at it - a request for clarification. I guess I'd just I'd rephrase it like so: 'What I don't get is this idea of atemporal change, how the will (but not its essence) changes, and evolves, into this or that, before representation, eventually coming to representation, as a kind of refined way to will more efficiently."

That seems to capture the spirit. I hope you don't mean to suggest that something can't change if its essence remains the same. That seems like a very confusing path to go down. Maybe it is what you mean though.

Ok, that makes sense, you can't know enough about the life of the person seeking advice in order to sway him one way or the other. There's a good chance, he'll have a good run of it, and enjoy the remainder of his days etc.

Well, I doubt he's taking a Schopenhaueran approach, but it seems to me that Un's "no-thing" means simply that consciousness is not a 'thing.' It's not a homunculus or a pineal gland or a super-platinum soul-gem. Its a process, a verb, something that happens. It's not nothing, because it happens, but it's certainly not a thing.

I guess I'm just spacing it today. Would you mind requoting the 'query', to help me out?

I think Un's right to call it "no-thing." I mean, I know Schop calls will the 'thing-in-itself' but he's playing off Kant. There's no sense in which the will is a 'thing.'

v gnomic, but I have no idea what you're talking about. What query? I don't think I've asked you anything on this thread

Strange answer. One can only give advice about things pertaining to duty? A friend once gave me the advice that I shouldn't buy European cars, with my salary, since the upkeep is steep. It was good advice, but I can't for the life of me see what it has to do with duty.

Strikes me as a cheap answer, tbh. Yeah, maybe the will in its essence doesn't change, but the way in which that essence manifests changes and evolves a whole bunch - and that before the purported birth of world-as-idea. I can cite some WWR passages?

ok, frame it another way, less universal and less categorical. young person who Oh Shit! has realized the world is v fucked up and there's a whole bundle of suffering ahead. What advice would you, person responding to the OP, give that person in terms of suicide v sticking it out?

You can rephrase the question. Having been born, should we, or should we not, kill ourselves?

'Silent' consciousness is something I experience very rarely - but it's happened to me a handful of times. Even that handful, though, is diverse. There's a peaceful silence, and there's also the silence before the storm.

I was perhaps too vague in talking about 'voice.' There are so many different kinds of voices. The narrative voice -the story of the self, told by the self to the self, in order to maintain the self - is certainly a construction of thought. (Though what is a 'construction of thought'? I guess the most basic sense of 'construction' is the creation of a whole out of parts, in a way that that whole serves a purpose the parts alone, scattered, could never achieve. Is the narrative voice a way of collating memories of our expedient actions in such a way that the collation, topsy-turvily, is meant to explain the actions which led to its construction? To make those actions seem less expedient or ad hoc? But what constructs here, and what's constructed, and what are the rules of construction, and what's the process of construction? It seems endlessly complicated.)

In any case, there is another voice which seems to speak through us at the same time we speak in it. I mean voice literally here, since this usually happens when speaking to another of something important to oneself. The type of talk where you find yourself saying things you never knew you actually felt or believed, but which you recognize as having felt and believed all along. I feel most like myself when talking like this, in my own voice, but it happens very rarely for me. I'm certainly not talking in my own voice right now.

What is that voice though? It seems so different from the cogito or the transcendental subject.

It strikes me that there's a difference between the "I" that we might speak of as a transcendental condition, and the voice that one speaks in. Neither are 'things,' but there's something earthy and forceful about one's voice (when one's speaking in one's own voice, which happens often for some, rarely for others) which, though not quite material, feels less immaterial than the cogito.

Yeah, I agree with all of what you said. I think the monk's remaining still is proof itself of the effectiveness of whatever he was doing, but I don't think I have a ghost of a chance of ever learning whatever that is.

I'm a bit cynical about philosophies of How to Live, not because I think that's less important that abstract theoretical stuff, I'm just skeptical that philosophy of any kind can teach you much about how to live your life.

What about that monk in Vietnam who did the thing of lighting himself on fire and staying stock-still til he died? Something was going on there, it's hard to say what, but something was going on.

I live in Portland, ME, so that probably has something to do with it. I guess I've always maintained a half-conscious metal separation of sprawl-y areas and social hubs, probably because I associate the former with the transit and the latter with downtowns (with fixity and centeredness.)

I looked up pulse on google street view. I was struck by how nondescript it was, and how depressing the setting was - a dingy dunkin donuts next door, that sense of endless sprawl where dollar store follows fast food restaurant follows gas station. When I first heard the reports, I imagined a chic luxurious place, on a street with a distinct personality.

I know that's all beside the point, but it felt strange to me and somehow made it all that much sadder.

Love the cover art. Know the artist?

I do want to qualify my position a little, though. I'm a reluctant panpsychist, and not even really that. I'm as drawn to the idea of a Great Mystery, unintelligible to human reason, as I am to panpsychism (& even panpsychism would have to be a bit mysterious since, as TGW points out, there's a danger of reducing everything to your own experience). What I will say, with conviction, is that neither materialism nor idealism really adds up, if you push them far enough.

I don't know that there would be a distinct point x. I guess it's something of a sorites paradox. What's a heap? What's 'representation'? When do creatures see? Is it when they first develop photoreceptive cells?

Is that any more of a problem than how little single-cell organisms evolve into complex ones?

And his summary of Kant's critical philosophy is superb (his history writing is a beacon of clarity). So I know I'd enjoy reading any of his works.

It's amazing how insightful-in-digestible-prose he can be, when he wants. The clarity of works like Kant and Critical Philosophy is exactly what makes me willing to engage him when he goes obscure.

Well, I'm down to help with the third option. Regarding the first option, I don't think an endorsement from me is going to affect TGW all that much tho tbh.

Well, I've already spoken my part about the illusion question, recently, and a while back. But I'm still not sure what you're looking for. For TGW to admit there are limitations to Schopenhauer? For an answer, in-and-of Schopenhauer, which would resolve these supposed limitations? For different clues and avenues to follow, outside of Schop?

Yeah, what I don't get is the idea of atemporal change, how the will changes, and evolves, into this or that, before representation, eventually coming to representation, as a kind of refined way to will more efficiently. This idea is certainly present in Schopenhauer and it doesn't make that much sense to me. I don't understand how change (& change in a certain direction!) occurs without time.

Yeah, I think I see where you're coming from. I just don't where to go from there, while hewing to Schopenhauer.

Compassion can be conventional, though. I do believe in compassion, but I doubt it's the watery-eyed universal force that a kind of Christian sentimentalism would have us believe.

Well, sure, I agree. True compassion can only occur through letting your guard down. The christian sentimental stuff keeps everyone at arms length - people are all opportunities for a compassion that's the same every time, that has nothing to do with other people.

Sorry, I think I lost the plot a bit. Yes, I agree that your closeness to someone is what makes it painful for them if you die, which in turn is a deincentive to killing yourself so as not to hurt them. But no, I don't think closeness generally is the cause of suffering, since you will suffer no matter what, only in different ways, if that closeness is abandoned.

Oh, I wasn't arguing that closeness generally is the cause of suffering. We were talking about why people, yourself included, are averse to hurting family - in particular, through suicide. I contended it had something to do with compassion. You mentioned it had more to do with convention. We went back and forth about what that meant exactly. But I think we agree, at least, that it has to do with 'closeness.' I think 'closeness' brings us v close to compassion.

It's not as if there is a new thing that arises, a second sort of thing, an illusion, that introduces a duality that now has to be explained. An illusion is just the mistaken conception that there is some new thing.

I know we went over this above, but, as long as you don't reify illusions, it's perfectly legitimate to ask why the will suddenly wills illusorily, since it never had before.

It's such a fun book, imo. I hope you do start a thread!

I'd be down for a reading group, just don't think I could do Kant this summer (Moliere and I and some others did the 3 critiques a couple years back on old PF, and I've still got a few years yet before I want to refresh.)

The will just swerves its way into representation, I guess.

It does seem confusing to explain the 'arising' of representation in instrumental terms, since there can be no instrumentality before that arising.

And it makes no sense to talk of strife outside temporality, though we can certainly talk about it outside kantian temporality which is linear and homogenous, analogous to geometrical space.

Part of what I'm saying comes from Deleuze and Guatarri's "What Is Philosophy", so the treatise is already out there though there book is much more interesting than my post.

Oooh, you should start a thread around some select quotes from WIP. I think that could be fun. I'd do it myself, but I'm currently using my copy to prop up my dresser, which is missing a piece, and it'd be a hassle to find another fix.

This may be a moot point at this point, but I'd like to go back to Schopenhauer's idea of time, and my interpretation of this that in order for us to see time as stretching all the way back to the big bang, we have to have an ever present organism keeping the world of representation present.

Sorry to keep talking over you, it's just I don't know what else to say at this point. I sympathize with your frustrations, but you seem to want to find a resolution in Schopenhauer, and there just isn't one there.

This long course of time itself, filled with innumerable changes, through which matter rose from form to form till at last the first percipient creature appeared, this whole time itself is only thinkable in the identity of a consciousness whose succession of ideas, whose form of knowing it is, and apart from which, it loses all meaning and is nothing at all. — Schop

You will always suffer, no matter what. Distance and closeness both cause suffering; everything causes suffering. — tgw

?

I was responding to this:

The closeness of the family is simply what makes my death cause them suffering int he first place. — tgw

I don't think divine punishment and hell is about vengeance, it's something more disturbing than that.

Well there's some truth to that, but Dante's Inferno is heavily populated by people who wronged Dante.

But like I said, I can understand the desire for vengeance and to kill the person who did it, but not torture. I think there's a sense in which people deeply feel that those who violate certain norms that they themselves expect to be held with regard to themselves, they have forfeited their right to exist, which is contingent on those very norms. And so retribution gives people an intuitive right to end that person, and even to get a righteous satisfaction out of it. But torture is just sick and purposeless.

Put another way, when someone dips beneath humanity by committing some atrocity, we feel that since they've let go of being human, they are no longer entitled to life as a human. But torture doesn't destroy their humanity -- animals hate physical torture in the same way that people do. It teaches no lesson, solve no problem, resolves no dispute, gives no closure.

I agree that torture resolves nothing, solves nothing, gives no closure. But I feel like I 'get' the desire to torture. I sketched it above, over a few posts, early on in the thread.

It seems like what you object to most about the serial killer is (1) he doesn't feel remorse and (2) his atrocities are senseless. I think (2) is scary because it bars us from doing what we normally do in the wake of trauma - tell a story that explains what happened. Explanation yields understanding which yields the sense of control that the trauma suspended. If you understand what happened you feel more able to prevent similar traumatizing irruptions in the future.

But if an adequate explanation of an outburst is impossible, then we can at least find some solace in the source of that outburst being as horrified as we are. His or her horror would signal an impulse to stave off any repetition of what transpired. Evil wouldn't be an infinite wellspring but an abberration which recoils from itself and self-corrects.

The serial killer offers neither palliative. He's a mute black hole which is unreachable. (The scariest version of Satan I can imagine is an old man (or young child) in an enclosed chamber, totally still, eyes wide open, transmitting evil into the world, but unreachable through language, almost insentient). He's an ineradicable black hole in those meaning/explanation-generating stories which make us feel safe and in control. Torture isn't about reforming such a person. It's a last resort in a control-crisis, a way of turning that black hole into an object over which we have total power.

The response to infidelity without remorse is similar. It's a panic response to the realization that love is never guaranteed and can always withdraw, no matter how perfectly you strive to deserve it. The desire to punish is an impotent wish to scare love so it will never leave us again.

The thing is, you can torture as many serial killers and punish as many adulterers as you want. But that won't stem the problem. The world itself is a ceaseless and remorseless generator of senseless violence. Serial killers, if you like, are 'places' in which being reveals itself utterly denuded. (Tho the sacred does the same, in a different register.) — me

No, the person the murderer who deserves torture kills is a woman. Not even a child, mind you, but a woman.

Yeah, I mean, again, this thread was occasioned by Agustino's claim, on another thread, that unrepentant adulterous women were no better than unrepentant serial killers and should be tortured. Given that background, it would have been kind of meaningless to respond to this thread by being like 'Why not a serial killer who tormented men, hmm?'

But classical avenging results in death, not torture.

To play devil's advocate, just for a sec, is this true?

• Prometheus
• The victims of reprisal in ancient wars (victims of Assyria, Babylon, Persia and so forth)*
• Anyone in Dante's Inferno
• The victims of so many public torture/executions in the middle ages
• Villains in revenge flicks (From "I Spit on Your Grave" to "Hard Candy")
• Reality Shows like "To Catch a Predator" etc. Public-Shame-torture.
• Brock Turner, in the eyes of so many online commentators.

I think ppl animated by vengeance are often on board with torture, which is exactly why they shouldn't have the reins. I don't think I'd try to have someone who brutalized a family member of mine tortured, bc I agree with yr Cyrenaic quote but, like, an animal part of me reallly would want that.
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& to some extent in modern war too. But what most people accepted as just rewards for rebellion or insolence, back in the day, is unreal.

What does a rationalization feel like? I'm saying that there'd be have to be some felt affinity that could only subsequently be rationalized. The genetic affinity makes sense, to a point, if we focus on physical markers. But what if everyone looks pretty much the same?

Most people in the world obviously wouldn't even know if I died, of the few that did, most wouldn't care. The closeness of the family is simply what makes my death cause them suffering int he first place.

But that's the point. The closeness is what causes the suffering. And our closeness to those close enough to suffer is what leads us to prevent that suffering

Say, for some reason, someone out there in Chicago, on campus, who you didn't personally feel close to, felt v close to you indeed. Who knows why, bizzare. And say you were in deep pain, but you knew your absence would make his or her life very hard. Would you suffer so that he or she didn't?

What do you mean? I know the gender of the torture-victim in the OP is male. I know the occasion for this thread was Agustino's horror, on another thread, at the idea of unrepentant adulterous women. I know I jabbed him a bit about that. Do you mean my lack of surprise at Agustino's harboring anger for licentious women?

What happened to Agustino?