This : "All rules for study are summed up in this one: learn only in order to create" can become the final, deepest lesson that one rubs like rosary beads in order to delay creating. — csalisbury

I do feel that. For me it's tricky because riffing on what I got from Derrida and others pretty much is my poetry. We are recreating Plato on this forum, a bunch of voices colliding and improvising. It's not like academia. Some true weirdos can thrive here. Quality is uneven but new tones and styles are possible.

Maybe --- theres a beauty in that terrain, which is wistful and decadent and intricate, but I'm not totally sold on this, and something in Derrida seems, well, cowardly. — csalisbury

One of the easier ways for me to approach this is to think of my own temptation to look at the world from a distance, to remain endlessly uncommitted. I relate to Derrida quite a bit, and I think that he also experience his own proper name as a toe-tag. My name is what they call me. It's not my name, for I am Ulysses no one. I also think of Kojeve's skeptic, with skepticism as another slave ideology, an excuse not to fight. Of course it's easy to imagine rich skeptics too, making excuses not be kinder and more generous. Maybe this can be boiled down to the preciousness of the artist, which takes us back to Nietzsche? Am I special enough that others should be sacrificed for me or at least have to do the dirty work while I do these mirror games? (Is the artist a choose-a-priest in a pluralistic society?) I also think of Marx and Stirner. Marx was stronger and righter in almost every way, but there is some mystic gleam in Stirner, which Hegel knew and described and tamed into a respectable responsible system that the state could like. Is this at all what you have in mind?

The Hamlet of the beginning is a coward (you see a theme arising, cowardice has been on my mind a while now) and in his self-monologue he knows this, but when he talks to the court he's ironic and clever and can't be caught, above them all. Still, it's all meaningless until he goes on his journey, then comes back with the real ability to avenge and restore. Before that, it's all the narcissistic flourishes of someone convincing himself of his own superiority in order to avoid his father's charge. — csalisbury

Let me float this idea by you. Hamlet was wrestling with a conspiracy theory. He really wasn't sure if the ghost was legit. He could also question his motives for wanting to believe or not believe (including cowardice.) There's also the grief, feelings about mommy's new boyfriend, Ophelia. Working up the courage makes sense as part of this, but all the conspiracy theory out there these days just made me think of Hamlet. A fucking ghost tells him that the government is evil in a special way, poison in the ear. Did the ghost pour poison in Hamlet's ear? We know also that Shakespeare played the ghost, that he lost his only son named Hamnet when the boy was 11. You may know all this from Ulysses, in which Stephen gives his own conspiracy theory about Shakespeare.

Regardless, can you give an example? — Xtrix

You have to understand how much I don't particularly like talking about Heidegger in depth. I've done a great deal of it and I've squared my intellectual accounts with him long ago. Nonetheless, in the spirit of laziness, here is a snippet from Lingis, whose argument basically boils down to the fact that being-toward-death cannot do the job that Heidegger wants it to do, and that the temporal and 'possibilizing' (my term) role assigned to it is far too theoretically overburderded and misses a certain immanence of death which frustrates any attempt to give it a temporally orienting/horizoning role (Blanchot, whose name has cropped up in this discussion, incidentally, was all about this - death disorients as much as it orients). Here is Lingis:

Heidegger argues that the sense of the irreversible propulsion of a life toward its end precedes and makes possible every unilateral array of means toward particular ends and every determinate action. But can death, which has no front lines and no dimensions, assign a determinate direction to one's life, and thereby impart a unilateral direction to the connections in the instrumental field? The anxiety that anticipates dying does not anticipate a last moment situated in the time of the world which my existence extends. Death is neither present nor future; it is imminent at any moment. How could death then fix the end and bring to flush the ends possible in the time that lies ahead?

Heidegger concedes that the path of one's own destiny, which unifies one's life and one's situation, cannot be drawn from the nothingness of death. He then argues that it is in the common world, in paths inscribed on the world by others, that one finds the possibilities left for one and for which one' s own powers are destined (B&T p. 434). Yet he would have to explain that the lives of others trace out paths of possibility which they leave for others because the path they actualized was an assignation put an them by death. The explanation only displaces the question.

In Heidegger's dialectic, anxiety, the most negative experience, experience of nothingness itself, converts into the most positive experience, positing my existence as my own, positing the world in its totality. The entry into the world as my home passes through the most extreme degree of alienation. ... [By contrast] to the dialectic that seeks to retrace the genesis of the world, Maurice Merleau-Ponty objected that distance, differentiation, gradation, pregnancy are primitive notions and that the facticity and nothingness with which dialectics constructs them are twin abstractions. — Lingis, Sensibility

There's alot more to this, and the full measure of the critique can't be given without contrasting it against that account for which 'distance, differentiation, gradation and pregnancy' are primary - but I simply have no desire to put in that work (for a related, Derridian critique, see here, 24mins-37mins; for a fleshed out account of the kind Lingis refers to, see here).

I will say, with respect to the discussion of etymology more generally - it's probably a good rule of thumb not to trust philosophers with doing it 'accurately'. They all have some kind of agenda and I'd much rather trust an actual philologist or linguist whose discipline it is. One of my other favourite philosophers - Giorgio Agamben - engages in long philological analyses all the time (he was a student of Heidegger's at one point), and while I love his work to pieces, I wouldn't dare offer any of it up without qualification to take it with a grain of salt.

To be perfectly honest I'm simply intimidated by the Spheres trilogy. And everything else he puts out. He writes very big bloody books. Which has never stopped me before, but I need to space them out and there's so much I (feel I) "need" to get to before diving into Sloterdijk. Don't get me wrong, I want to read him, but it's just a bit of a matter of an economization of time. I'm still tossing up whether or not I'm going to do the three volumes of Capital by the end of the year...

And I've seen that Tyler Cohen interview. I think maybe part of the 'problem' is that Zizek is playing to many audiences at once, and, yes, it's hard to square all of what he attempts to do. It'd be interesting to me to see how Sloterdijk does it. But I think it's useful as a reader to try and take responsibility for what one gets out of him. Reading Zizek always puts my guard up. I'm more critical when I read him than other authors and I almost get more out of him precisely for that reason. A kind of pedagogy of suspicion that is all the more productive because you can't trust your source.

there really isn't an "inner" world separated from an "outer" world. This is very hard for some people to accept, as is the subject/object dichotomy. We love our dualisms. — Xtrix

I think of our dualisms as useful practical tools that harden into metaphysical-strength concrete.

I think we might already agree on the following, but to zoom on on

One way I understand time (us) in Heidegger is in terms of inheritance. We just take metaphysically hardened dualisms for granted. That's just what philosophy is if we were first exposed to it that way. In the same way our weird parents are just parents-in-general until we widen our experience and look back.

I think that's why we are essentially historical beings. The past leaps ahead. It leaps ahead most dominantly when that leap is invisible. That we are projected on the future is intuitive for most people, I think. Living in the moment is even on our to-do list. To dwell on being thrown, though, is to suffer a threat to one's autonomy. There's the fantasy of being one's own father, being self-caused. Perhaps God is an impossible image of the unthrown thrower. Man is a futile passion to not be thrown, to be God. This is my attempt to corrupt Sartre toward Heidegger.

Anyway, I'd also like to hear what you have to say about time and about the question of being. As you know, I find it slippery and yet so adjacent to my concerns about meaning and what separates us from AI that could not be distinguished from a genuine mind, whatever we/those are.

My fury is reserved for Heidegger. I'm merely amazed, and baffled, by those who admire him.

It's odd, isn't it, for a philosopher to be enamored by a thug, and thuggishness? I suspect this tells us something about him. The cerebral among us seem inclined to this kind of base attraction sometimes. Pound, Yeats and others were quite fond of Mussolini.

My favorite Lehrer tune is The Vatican Rag, which I think could be found somewhere in the Web.

Nonetheless, in the spirit of laziness, here is a snippet from Lingis, whose argument basically boils down to the fact that being-toward-death cannot do the job that Heidegger wants it to do, — StreetlightX

Fair enough. Heidegger's views on death and anxiety were never very striking to me, nor do i pretend to understand them very well. So if that's where your criticism lies, I wouldn't want to defend it. I will check out the links regardless.

say, with respect to the discussion of etymology more generally - it's probably a good rule of thumb not to trust philosophers with doing it 'accurately'. They all have some kind of agenda and I'd much rather trust an actual philologist or linguist whose discipline it is. — StreetlightX

Yes that's true, but that's what was surprising to me: I didn't think linguists were calling into question what they apparently are (semantic accuracy).

But it's tough with philosophy, as you know. We should be equally skeptical of linguists as well, because without a solid background in philosophical thinking, translations can easily go awry. Aletheia as "truth" (with all our modern ideas associated with it), for example, while certainly accurate, doesn't quite capture its usage 2500 years ago (of course) and so can be misleading, just as translating "episteme" as "science" can be misleading. I'm sure you agree. Regardless, your point is well taken.

think of our dualisms as useful practical tools that harden into metaphysical-strength concrete. — path

It's as if we habitualize a way of interpreting. I'm reminded of those ambiguous pictures where, once you're told what it is beforehand, that's all you can see (like a cat) without a great deal more effort, whereas it could also be interpreted as a candlestick. I think something similar to that happens with our basic preconceptions about the world. The mind-body version of dualism is a good example, particularly in the West. Descartes' influence really can't be overestimated.

Living in the moment is even on our to-do list. — path

That's great! I like that.

Anyway, I'd also like to hear what you have to say about time and about the question of being. — path

I think that time is like saying "life" - it has to be presupposed. It's the background, like light. It's no wonder every Western philosopher grapples with time (and change) in some fashion, but also the contemplatives of the East.

Heidegger's claim is that being (also a background) is opened up (or disclosed) by human being, and since human being is temporality, we interpret it on that basis. In the West, we do so by "presencing." I find that accurate.

"Ontologically, Da-sein is in principle different from everything objectively present and real. It's 'content' is NOT founded in the substantiality of a substance, but in the 'self-constancy' of the existing self whose being was conceived as care... Along with this, we must establish what possible ontological questions are to be directed toward the 'self', if it is neither substance nor subject."

So again, it seems like action instead of being is the foundation of the world for him. Very modern. Also sounds Buddhistic

Does this help illuminate my Heidegger passage?: "All our reasonings concerning matters of fact are founded on a species of Analogy." Hume

I think that time is like saying "life" - it has to be presupposed. It's the background, like light. — Xtrix

That does seem right to me, so I guess I'm trying to fish more out of all of us. How is ti a background? To be thrown (speak only thru inherited traces, for one) is part of that.

Thrown and entangled, Dasein is initially and for the most part lost in what it takes care of.
...
Spirit does not fall into time, but factical existence 'falls,' in falling prey, out of primordial, authentic temporality. — Heidegger

from B&T II.VI

There are other great passages around there that I'm too lazy to type up, and I think you have Stambough's translation yourself.

To me this means falling into the past that leaps ahead as present-at-hand false necessity. Authentic temporality realizes its contingency, knows that it is thrown, and that history is not an object for the eye.
This 'false necessity' is IMV illustrated by taking over the vocab of the times in a 'blind' way as a ready-to-hand tool. It's the 'given' that makes us intelligible to one another. Part of this given is the vulgar concept of time as a sequence of nows, which obscures genuine historical time and our being thrown, being entangled. So 'being' is a vapor, but then all of the elemental words are vapors without force as we mostly just pass them back and forth as too obvious to be worth thinking about. I connect this to the Hegel quote about being stuck on the surface, taking master words like 'subject' for granted. I also connect it to the Wittgenstein quote: the 'beetle' plays know role. For practical purposes we need only adopt the conventions for immersed, worldly business. We don't know what we are talking about, and we fall into time by also not knowing that we don't know what we are talking about. We forget that we have forgotten.

My approach to this is connected to Heidegger's quotes of Yorck, and Yorck seems like a pre-Heidegger, a John-the-baptist for Heidegger.

There seem to be two questions here. First, how can one conceive the "subject matter" (Sachverhalt) of the human sciences, i.e., human, historical life, without reducing it to a natural thing? Second, is the theoretical approach and manner of knowing that prevails in the modern sciences appropriate for understanding its subject matter? For Dilthey, both questions about the human being -- as subject matter of knowledge and as knower -- unite in the philosophic question about what he calls the "connectedness of mental life" (p. 4). Yorck, however, possesses a keener awareness that the domain of the "historical" differs "generically" from that of other entities (p. 7). Heidegger clearly means to suggest that an adequate treatment of these questions about the human being requires the analysis of the "ontological characteristics" of Dasein in its "historicity" (p. 73). Such a consideration of "Dasein," taken as the "subject matter" of inquiry, will then also address the question of how human, historical life is to be apprehended theoretically, for the analytic works out the ways in which Dasein is "disclosed" to itself (through, for example, its own, pretheoretical "autonomous self-interpretation" [pp. 32-33]).
...
n the Concept of Time, the task of "understanding historicity" appears to be more central than it is in Being and Time. The account of "what time is" and the description of Dasein's "temporality" are presented as preparation for this problematic (pp. 2, 10). Accordingly, this text amplifies the importance of the insight into Dasein's historicity for our understanding of philosophy and science -- and that includes our understanding of the philosophic inquiry that is communicated in these texts. Heidegger thus praises Yorck for drawing the "ultimate conclusion" from "his insight into the historicity of Dasein" (p. 9). This conclusion is the need to "historicize philosophy," to, in other words, "understand philosophy as a manifestation of life" (p. 9). That Heidegger's own inquiry is historicized is confirmed later in Chapter 4: "If historicity co-determines Dasein's being, it follows that any investigation that aims to open this entity must be historical" (p. 81). — link

https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/the-concept-of-time/

What I grok thru Braver's take on the later Heidegger ('sendings of being') is a kind of open-ended Hegelianism. For Braver we are thrown into 'impersonal conceptual schemes.' If this language is mentalisitc, that's maybe because Braver is trying to sell forbidden continental thinkers to analytics in a kind of bridge language. These 'schemes' are 'forms of life' are 'zeitgeists' are 'understandings of being.' Or it seems to me that this is the evolution of the same vague historicizing insight. 'Thinking' is profoundly social-historical, in a way that thinking can hardly overestimate.

Something like this seems like the core of Heidegger to me, along with the ready-to-hand mode of being and the lifeworld nexus of equipment (subconceptuality, enactedness).

"Ontologically, Da-sein is in principle different from everything objectively present and real. It's 'content' is NOT founded in the substantiality of a substance, but in the 'self-constancy' of the existing self whose being was conceived as care... Along with this, we must establish what possible ontological questions are to be directed toward the 'self', if it is neither substance nor subject."

So again, it seems like action instead of being is the foundation of the world for him. Very modern. Also sounds Buddhistic — Gregory

Does this help illuminate my Heidegger passage?: "All our reasonings concerning matters of fact are founded on a species of Analogy." Hume — Gregory

That all sounds more or less correct to me. Dasein is enacted. We bark and meow about substance and subject as if we meow what we are barking about, but it's all analogy, poetry. Metaphysicians forget that they are poetry-in-progress by taking dead metaphors literally, which is to say as not-metaphors. The notion of a purely literal cognition is part of a white or anemic mythology, a chest of old mystical coins with their inscriptions rubbed off. The literal is metaphor so dead that we've forgotten it ever breathed, that metaphors like breath are at the heart of systematic theologies. The most suspicious and scientistic epistemological machinery is sophistry that forgets its instituting metaphors. (If it's all just metaphors, wtf is a metaphor? A dead metaphor, a forgotten journey.)

Yorck seems like a pre-Heidegger, a John-the-baptist for Heidegger. — path

Ah, thank you for this analogy. Prepare ye the way of the Lord!

It's odd, isn't it, for a philosopher to be enamored by a thug, and thuggishness? I suspect this tells us something about him. The cerebral among us seem inclined to this kind of base attraction sometimes. Pound, Yeats and others were quite fond of Mussolini. — Ciceronianus the White

To me it's not so odd. There's a violence in philosophy as it questions dearly held assumptions. There's perhaps the same violence in authoritatively telling others how it is, how it should be. That strong intellectuals in the humanities are something like creative geniuses and not working in a giant lab on particle physics might also have something to do with this. The priest-artist-intellectual in touch with the grand truth, which only he gets right, is already a single self-important mouth, a dictator. (Pound, Yeats, others.)

Heidegger sneered in his early work at the idea of philosophers working together on a committee. He had pictures of Dostoevsky and Van Gogh in his office. He loved Kierkegaard. This cult of the genius seems connected to the cult of the dictator. 'We need a strong man (singular) to cut through all the red tape and confusion.' The little people don't have the guts. They just chatter or cluck like hens.

At the same time Heidegger's work points in the opposite direction. This willful self-present independent subject is itself bunk and confusion. He's just a whirlpool in inherited traces. But people often hate this more Derridean attitude as irresponsibly playful. Opposed to Hitlerian elitist priest-philosophy we have Feuerbachian socialism-humanism (in its modern forms) and outside of both to some degree the stoic and the skeptic. The stoic can of course be responsibly political, which is perhaps where you are. Be a stoic philosopher, but first/also be a decent citizen. I feel like the skeptic who tries to remind myself not to be too selfish, too detached.

Ah, thank you for this analogy. Prepare ye the way of the Lord! — Ciceronianus the White

Heidegger explicitly called himself a theologian in a letter, so yeah! But this structure also haunts anti-religion. We see this in Stirner reading Feuerbach against Feuerbach. Any lingo can function metaphysically, spiritually, politically. The libertarian language of individual freedom can and is used in class war by the 'priests' of a ruling class. It seems to me that many lovers of Trump think of themselves as masters of suspicion as they wallow in conspiracy theory (the new opiate of the masses?)

I am not lumping you in with these guys, just offering an example of how just about any lingo can be subverted (such as the lingo of Marx by creeps like Stalin).

Here's a little more background on the 'enacted historical we' that runs like a thread through the philosophical conversation, which Hegel (among others) grasped as essentially historical.

These Yorck quotes remind me of the Hegelian criticism of Kant (which I will never master.)

That life is historical means that each person is always already outside his or her own individual “nature” and placed within the historical connection to predecessor- and successor-generations. For Yorck, living self-consciousness is, to use Hegel's fortuitous phrase, “the I that is we and the we that is I” (Hegel 1807, p. 140).
...
Transcendental philosophy reduces historical life to the merely “subjective,” which misses the genuine characteristic of Geist, spirit or mind, namely its real, historical extension and connection. — link

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/yorck/

We also have Feuerbach on this:

Unlike sense experience, thought is essentially communicable. Thinking is not an activity performed by the individual person qua individual. It is the activity of spirit, to which Hegel famously referred in the Phenomenology as “‘I’ that is ‘We’ and ‘We’ that is ‘I’” (Hegel [1807] 1977: 110). Pure spirit is nothing but this thinking activity, in which the individual thinker participates without himself (or herself) being the principal thinking agent. — link

Then there's Wittgenstein:

--But suppose the word "beetle" had a use in these people's language? --If so it would not be used as the name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty. --No, one can 'divide through' by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is.

That is to say: if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of 'object and designation' the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant. — W

If we think only in signs (or can only claim to be thinking things only with signs), then thinking is not done by the individual person as individual person. That there is no private language is old news, but some of us don't like the mystic editorializing of those old newspapers. If one starts with the TLP and its scientistic form, however, and ends with homely reminders...we finally have ears to ear that we never had mouths to ourselves.

Heidegger explicitly called himself a theologian in a letter, so yeah! But this structure also haunts anti-religion. We see this in Stirner reading Feuerbach against Feuerbach. Any lingo can function metaphysically, spiritually, politically. The libertarian language of individual freedom can and is used in class war by the 'priests' of a ruling class. It seems to me that many lovers of Trump think of themselves as masters of suspicion as they wallow in conspiracy theory (the new opiate of the masses?) — path

Well then, when he referred to some god being needed to save us in Der Spiegel, he must have meant some other god, not himself. At least he said "god" and not "fuhrer" that time. It's likely they're the same, to him, however.

'We need a strong man (singular) to cut through all the red tape and confusion.' The little people don't have the guts. They just chatter or cluck like hens. — path

If I understand you correctly, then he'd probably eulogize Trump as he did Hitler. Imagine it: "President Trump alone is the present and future American reality and its law!" I can hear it being said, see them marching.

Eh, sorry. I do get carried away.

But I disagree about there being a streak of violence in philosophy. Nietzsche may have filled his writings with exclamation points, Schopenhauer pushed noisy women down stairs, Rousseau delighted in confessing his sins and telling everyone the wonderful things he learned by sinning, much like St. Augustine, but philosophy, particularly romantic philosophy, is generally an expression of self-love or self-involvement. A kind of onanism. How's that for an analogy? Which some used to say does violence to the onanist if I recall my Catholic youth correctly, so perhaps there's something in what you say.

I hesitate to mention Dewey in a thread about Heidegger, especially since csalisbury has joined the discussion. But Dewey is an example of a philosopher--a modern one, even--who might be said to have tried to make philosophy applicable to public affairs, society and education, without evoking the destiny of some nation, race or group of peoples, and fuhrers and gods, and without demeaning other nations, races or groups of people, and some others have as well, so perhaps it can be done. The Stoics too, given their view that we're social beings, each carrying a bit of an immanent deity within us. But I doubt musings regarding the Nothing and daisen, technophobia and visions of hearty peasants lovingly placing seeds in nature's bosom will result in any true change.

No doubt I've overstayed my welcome.

At least he said "god" and not "fuhrer" that time. It's likely they're the same, to him, however. — Ciceronianus the White

I'm no expert on the later Heidegger, but I think that he had a new 'sending of being' in mind. I think he saw us (in this stage) as control freaks. Our need to control was out of control. Can we get our need to control under control? This is like putting living in the moment on our to-do list. 'Only a god can save us' means that we are fucked unless somehow a new attitude can grip us so that we loosen our grip.

It reminds of an unnecessarily mystic expression of a pessimism that Rorty would occasionally voice. The passivity implied is questionable in its own way. Instead of marching to war, one just sits around and waits.

is generally an expression of self-love or self-involvement. A kind of onanism. — Ciceronianus the White

If intellectuals aren't political, they are onanistic. If they aren't sufficiently political, they are to that degree still onanistic. If they are too far left or right, they are guilty in the eyes of their opponents. There's a primacy of the political going on. 'Self-love and self-involvement' is right, but how is this neutrally evaluated? An activist can always tell you that you are not doing enough, that you are wallowing in your privilege, and they may be right. At the same time the activist may be insufficiently critical in a self-involved way to be doing the right thing. The worst are full of passionate intensity, but do the best lack all conviction?

The devil is in the details, and the negotiation in endless.

But Dewey is an example of a philosopher--a modern one, even--who might be said to have tried to make philosophy applicable to public affairs, society and education, without evoking the destiny of some nation, race or group of peoples, and fuhrers and gods, and without demeaning other nations, races or groups of people, and some others have as well, so perhaps it can be done. The Stoics too, given their view that we're social beings, each carrying a bit of an immanent deity within us. But I doubt musings regarding the Nothing and daisen, technophobia and visions of hearty peasants lovingly placing seeds in nature's bosom will result in any true change. — Ciceronianus the White

I like Dewey quite a bit, and Rorty, who turned me on to him. I agree that Heidegger is hard indeed to resuscitate for political use. But just the disaster of Heidegger is fascinating. It's a historical phenomenon that's worth making sense of, and Heidegger provides some of the tools for that. To me, reality is just that complex, that messy.

If one starts with the TLP and its scientistic form, however, and ends with homely reminders... — path

I think you are right about a scientistic reading; the TLP's quasi-formalist expression, however, deliberately calls attention to the semantic form of it's own meta-language (i.e. nonsense) and, arguably, meta-discursivity in general.

That's a great point, and I should say that I adore the TLP. I don't claim to have mastered it, but it's meant something to me.

I guess my comment is a slight dig at some I've argued with who just ignore the mystical charge in Wittgenstein and hate continentals as language on holiday. I'm looking at/for a kind of continuity in the long philosophical conversation. Is anything truly fresh? Completely new under the sun?

To be perfectly honest I'm simply intimidated by the Spheres trilogy. And everything else he puts out. He writes very big bloody books. Which has never stopped me before, but I need to space them out and there's so much I (feel I) "need" to get to before diving into Sloterdijk. Don't get me wrong, I want to read him, but it's just a bit of a matter of an economization of time. I'm still tossing up whether or not I'm going to do the three volumes of Capital by the end of the year.... — StreetlightX

I get that (&, to be honest, I left off about 1/4 of the way through the last volume of Spheres, will come back some day) I will say that, if you bracket size, his style and vibe is so unintimidating. That may not be the case for someone who isn't broadly familiar with Heidegger, but if you have Heidegger under your belt (as you do), the books are truly a breeze. They're fun to read. And whenever he dips into Heideggerese it's delightfully tongue-in-cheek (Like, you can see he understands the terminology, and is using it right, but he only takes it as seriously as it deserves. It's not mocking, it's more like affectionate irreverence.)

And I've seen that Tyler Cohen interview. I think maybe part of the 'problem' is that Zizek is playing to many audiences at once, and, yes, it's hard to square all of what he attempts to do. It'd be interesting to me to see how Sloterdijk does it. But I think it's useful as a reader to try and take responsibility for what one gets out of him. Reading Zizek always puts my guard up. I'm more critical when I read him than other authors and I almost get more out of him precisely for that reason. A kind of pedagogy of suspicion that is all the more productive because you can't trust your source

My thought on ZIzek - and I've had this thought for a long time, even when I was really into him - is that there is no single, consistent way of framing his thought (I don't think he could, even to himself). It's more like there or 3 or 4 quasi-consistent frames which feel similar (use similar references and terms etc) but kind of cycle through, in a blurred way, and the manic hopping-around isn't incidental but is an unavoidable symptom of his thought. Of course he recognized this, to a degree, and it gets baked into his metaphysics, via Lacan - whether this is a mark of rigorous thinking (i.e. the point of Plato's Parmenides oughtn't be one of negative theology, but simply that reality is an inconsistent matrix of incompossibilities suspended above* the void) or Next-Level self-gaslighting is another question. I think approaching him - and others, oneself - with suspicion, or at least an ironic reticence, is a good move.

----

*or within or below or throughout... mobius strips, Borromean rings, a dragon that eats his tail by chanting 'topology' nine times in order to become both surface, depth, and the transversal motion by which surface and depth co-create one another, like a fractal, what if the epidermis was your intestines and the libido was your epidermis**, the holy trinity)

---
**ok, to be fair, that particular one is a riff on Lyotard in Libidinal Economies (which he later rejected), but it's part of the same family.

I was thinking more about this and it's maybe the question of being. The beetle in the box is there.
Something 'is' behind the signs. But the signs can't grab it. The signs can't grab anything
It's a vapor? Does one awaken the question for the wrong reasons? Hard to tell. It's all caught up in sign-systems and politics, seems to me.

What is the difference if not this 'consciousness' or 'being'? Because if the planet-size computer can out-talk us eventually, it won't be clear. Your panpsychism is reasonable to me. It could genuinely become difficult to know for sure if our planet-size-AI is 'really' there. To defend ourselves against that thought we'd need to think that our biology is magical in some sense or get into some quantum woo. I don't know. It makes sense to me that 'being is not a being.' There's the metaphor of the light that makes things visible. Nicholas of Cusa was maybe saying something like this. It does get negative-theological. It's all so slippery that I'll just stop here. — path

I don't know Nicholas of Cusa (besides a few quick references in other books), and I don't mind negative theology, so I'd be curious to hear more.


Let me see if I can try to gesture at something here.

I feel like what keeps happening is something like this: There is one pole and there is another pole One thing that can happen is this: The latter is seen as somehow pure, and what we want to get at, and defend against the suggestion that it, the latter, is just a species of the former. AI is not dasein.

Then there is the derridean approach: Both things are impossibly tangled up in one another, and the neat separation is something that is grounded in their entanglement, their entanglement is the condition of the separation. In reality, it's a play all the way down.

Both systems of thinking are operative, but blip on and off, depending on the situation. They flow into one another, and it's not always clear exactly what part is speaking.

So the first:

Signs
|
Being

Derrida: No, it's not like that, binaries always conceal an intimate entanglement.

But that immediately does this:

_______
Signs
|
Being
_______
|
Differance

You can see how this could go on for a million iterations, reduplicating itself by adding new levels. I think what's happening is thought (a particular kind of thought) is trying to get out of thought by thinking (a particular kind of thinking.) At the limit, you can even know this, but still helplessly do it (this is where you get into stuff like using the term 'being' but crossing it out and all that)

Virgil can help Dante through hell, but he can't bring him out of it. That's a key point in the Inferno, there's a limit to what he can do. You can almost hear thought, reluctant to let Virgil go, crashing against its limit.

But how can you move beyond that, without repeating it, on another level? I think the answer is: you can't think your way out of it. You can't get to the right thought by rejecting other thoughts, in thought. You have to do something irl which is always casually textured and non-binary, wouldn't even think to draw attention to it, (what would it mean to learn to swim in a binary way? What would it mean to intentionally swim in a way that draws attention to itself as nonbinary swimming?) And then you can look back at these thought-patterns as all just part of it, not to be rejected, but not to be taken as seriously as they took themselves. They were one thing you did among others.

To continue the ongoing conceit: Derrida is Hamlet pre Sea-Journey (Or Stephen at the beginning of Ulysses, walking along a beach spinning endless fine thoughts, while still bowing his head to Deasy and Buck Mulligan). Something has to be done, thinking won't do it (Derrida's response to Searle is similar to, though more histrionic than, Stephen's bitter internal mockings of those who block him. Searle, and Deasy, may be buffoons, but doing thought-laps around them doesn't change squat) This is also the problem of addiction in general: problem is (this kind of) thinking can justify itself as Poetry (it isn't) in a more convincing way than other addictions. Define addiction generally as: 'a defense against change' and you can go a long way in understanding why a certain kind of thought endlessly renews itself.

Why does Ulysses (or Portrait of The Artist) work? Because Joyce doesn't edit out Stephen's earlier confusions, he works them into everything that comes after, as essential.

I don't know Nicholas of Cusa (besides a few quick references in other books), and I don't mind negative theology, so I'd be curious to hear more. — csalisbury

I tried to find the quote (read it once in an anthology), but the idea is that being is like vision itself while beings are what are seen. I relate this to pointing at what is 'here' and 'now.' Or it's what language is about. Feuerbach might gesture at sensation, tho 'sensation' is caught in the sign-system. Being is the beetle in the box, the one the system of beetle-talk can in some sense do without. Or it depends on no particular beetle. Clearly something like desire drives human history.

I feel like what keeps happening is something like this: There is one pole and there is another pole One thing that can happen is this: The latter is seen as somehow pure, and what we want to get at, and defend against the suggestion that it, the latter, is just a species of the former. AI is not dasein.

Then there is the derridean approach: Both things are impossibly tangled up in one another, and the neat separation is something that is grounded in their entanglement, their entanglement is the condition of the separation. In reality, it's a play all the way down.

Both systems of thinking are operative, but blip on and off, depending on the situation. They flow into one another, and it's not always clear exactly what part is speaking. — csalisbury

That desc. of the derridean approach is great! I also like the sketch of the quest for the pure. On dasein issue, maybe we can clarify which aspect we have in mind. For many, a 'genuine' AI would know that it is there. It can't just say that it is there. That's too easy. Or maybe we should ask less. Can AI ever feel pain? It's pain or redness inasmuch as these exceed our talk about them, what 'sensation' and 'emotion' try to point at, without that pain-outside-language being able to anchor the sign, as Wittgenstein saw, at least not on an individual level.

This part of our AI talk connects with the panpsychism issue. Can silicon feel? The other part (concerned with bot-speak or idle-talk) is IMV more about metaphysics trying to crawl out of itself. The two meet up here perhaps. What, if anything, grounds or anchors the sign-system? Sensation are emotion are there. (They are what we articulate.)

I think what's happening is thought (a particular kind of thought) is trying to get out of thought by thinking (a particular kind of thinking.) At the limit, you can even know this, but still helplessly do it (this is where you get into stuff like using the term 'being' but crossing it out and all that) — csalisbury

Right. For me it's important tho that this can become a kind of play. Our helplessness becomes infinite jest.

You have to do something irl which is always casually textured and non-binary, wouldn't even think to draw attention to it, (what would it mean to learn to swim in a binary way? What would it mean to intentionally swim in a way that draws attention to itself as nonbinary swimming?) And then you can look back at these thought-patterns as all just part of it, not to be rejected, but not to be taken as seriously as they took themselves. They were one thing you did among others. — csalisbury

Right. I agree. And we can mention binary thinking versus non-binary thinking, which is of course more binary thinking.

Right. I agree. And we can mention binary thinking versus non-binary thinking, which is of course more binary thinking. — path

This is why doing is so important. Without it, there is only the revolving door of opposed thoughts. Not swimming is not [not-swimming, which is of course more swimming.] Do you see what I mean? There is a trick and enchantment in thought, it's hard to see out of.

To continue the ongoing conceit: Derrida is Hamlet pre Sea-Journey (Or Stephen at the beginning of Ulysses, walking along a beach spinning endless fine thoughts, while still bowing his head to Deasy and Buck Mulligan). Something has to be done, thinking won't do it. — csalisbury

On an applied existential level, I think I agree, sort of. (But) The real Derrida was a globe-trotting womanizer, famous enough to create a backlash, basically a wildly successful poet, a lovable more user-friendly Nietzsche for nice, respectable people.

To me Buck would be like some doctor on the front lines of the pandemic. He's not up his own ass. Chances are he can't keep up with Stephen/Hamlet at their verbal game, but he enacts a different stance on life, which he can also articulate in terms of 'irresponsible' or 'onanistic.' Or I think of the activist chiding the navel-gazer awash in his privilege. Do something, you lazy, selfish poet! To be clear, I do wrestle occasionally with the image of Buck. I'd probably feel more guilty if I didn't have the convenient excuse of a background of poverty. 'I ain't no senator's son, or nephew, or distant cousin.' But this poverty excuse connects to the slave ideology of the skeptic. Artists are pregnant women. Are intellectuals in general a little worried about getting their precious brains beat out in the streets? You comments on Zizek are fascinating, and that's where I'm coming from. How serious is Zizek?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-gK-CzCHug

I fucking love this video. Isn't he just telling the truth as a joke? It's more complicated than that, because he's aware of it, but...?

The real Derrida was a globe-trotting womanizer,
famous enough to create a backlash, basically a wildly successful poet, a lovable more user-friendly Nietzsche for nice, respectable people. — path

Sure, but we both know, I imagine, that womanizing is itself an addiction. It is a mark of desirability, for sure, but it is not an entry into a Ledger of those who succeeded. It is only a victory against being non-desirable, and anything like that will become a compulsion, so long as what-it's-a-victory-against haunts

To me Buck would be like some doctor on the front lines of the pandemic. He's not up his own ass. Chances are he can't keep up with Stephen/Hamlet at their verbal game, but he enacts a different stance on life, which he can also articulate in terms of 'irresponsible' or 'onanistic.' Or I think of the activist chiding the navel-gazer awash in his privilege. Do something, you lazy, selfish poet!
(Or I might chide myself to be more social irl. But my job is social (teaching), so I don't usually feel as lonely as a should, given how few people I really open up to.) — path

I would like to take the chiding out of it, if possible. When I'm talking about doing, I don't mean it in an accusatory way. I mean it in a universal way : here's the problem, the way through is doing. I mean it 'beyond good and evil' or any moralizing. Like, 'I think I see a snare here, and I think this is the way out of it.'

Most simply said, something like: 'As someone who himself rarely did, this is how I've been thinking about this lately, and, having done a little doing, recently, I think it's true. I would like to pass it on because I think we are similar in some ways, and I believe it can help. but I still find myself relying on long-worn ways of talking which I can see coming off as chiding, though that's not my intent.

Sure, but we both know, I imagine, that womanizing is itself an addiction. It is a mark of desirability, for sure, but it is not an entry into a Ledger of those who succeeded. It is only a victory against being non-desirable, and anything like that will become a compulsion, so long as what-it's-a-victory-against haunts — csalisbury

This is a great point. I should have been careful about mentioning the womanizing. I tried to do some of that myself once in long gone days, and there's still a crooked little envy in me for that kind of life. For me it was relatively squalid. I was (for instance) a sandwhich artist, and the girls (tho cute) were also alienated young adults. Derrida got the glamour version of that, and his wife tolerated it, and many thought he was a genius. It's the nerdy version of the rock star fantasy. I know from his bio tho that he suffered terribly at times from depression. He seems definitely to have been haunted. As far as lives go, I still think he was luckier than most. But everyone suffers, and it's likely that wiser if note cleverer people have lived happier, quieter lives in obscurity.

I would like to take the chiding out of it, if possible. When I'm talking about doing, I don't mean it in an accusatory way. I mean it in a universal way : here's the problem, the way through is doing. I mean it 'beyond good and evil' or any moralizing. Like, 'I think I see a snare here, and I think this is the way out of it.'

Most simply said, something like: 'As someone who himself rarely did, this is how I've been thinking about this lately, and, having done a little doing, I think it's true. I would like to pass it on, because I think it can help, but I still find myself relying on long-worn ways of talking which I can see coming off as chiding, though that's not my intent. — csalisbury

I didn't mean to imply that you meant it that way. I was somewhat just stilll responding to Cic above and also to real life circumstances (the real world moment and my place in it.) Anyway, I am a good target for that comment, because I do largely experience the world as a spectacle. Part of my job is teaching, so even that is more talking about technical ways of seeing the world as a spectacle.

This is why doing is so important. Without it, there is only the revolving door of opposed thoughts. Not swimming is not [not-swimming, which is of course more swimming.] Do you see what I mean? There is a trick and enchantment in thought, it's hard to see out of. — csalisbury

I'm not sure I feel what you mean. Is it more than being immersed in washing the dishes, chopping carrots, a walk in nice weather?

I'm not sure I feel what you mean. Is it more than being immersed in washing the dishes, chopping carrots, a walk in nice weather? — path

Partially that. I don't want to come across as more experienced then I am, because I'm in the shaky bambi-on-the-ice stage myself, and often relapse. It's that, but it's also the bad memories and emotions that well up, and meeting them as they well up, without contextualizing them or looking for a way out of them. Everyday life is shot through with really hard, heavy stuff. I think the more you look at what everyday life is, without something to shield you from it, the less boring it seems. Being immersed in washing the dishes and chopping the carrots and walking is really really nice if you can do it! But that only happens by immersing yourself also, fully, and without false exit, in all the less bucolic aspects of life, which are brutal. And the desire for the final culmination, the Truth Stated, the perfect work of art etc is part of it too (part of it.)That's what I mean about the airlock : The 'outside' of the system isn't an idyll - it's all the things without an addictive defense, and they are all over the pleasant/unpleasant spectrum, but engaging them, rather than withdrawing to see them from a 'safe' vantage, is what lets all the rest happen - I think that is where poetry comes from, for example, if you want to write poetry, but there might be something to be said for just actually living your life, as your life, without watching it from a distance.

---I want to add the 'you' here, is not at you directly. I'm relaying my thoughts recently which are in a second-person form, usually addressed to me as I think them

[off to bed, much later than I realized, hope to pick back up soon]