The contention is “constructs” not “construes”. — Mww
Construe: "to arrange the words of (a translation) in their natural order," hence "to interpret, explain, understand the meaning of," from Late Latin construere "to relate grammatically," in classical Latin "to build up, pile together," from assimilated form of com "with, together" (see con-) + struere "to pile up" (from PIE root *stere- "to spread").
Specific sense in law, "to explain or interpret for legal purposes," is from 1580s. Compare construction and construct (v.), which is a later doublet. Related: Construed; construing; construal.
Agreed on understanding/judgement, but perception is the source of that which is empirically knowable, but it is not the source of empirical knowledge. It is possible to perceive a thing and not know what it is. — Mww
Construe' is the same root as 'construct' but pertains to language and meaning, in particular. — Wayfarer
That would be ego, and conditioned thought, and discursive reasoning, in my reading. — Wayfarer
We can talk around it, about it, how it fits, is contextualized; we just can't interpretatively nail it down like I can nail down what a bank teller is or an igneous rock. — Constance
Hopefully we agree that perception does not construct anything at all. — Mww
But this ego is a slippery discussion. If it is taken to mean the assertive self, with confidence and even aggression behind it, as if in competition, then the ego is, by my lights, something objectionable, in need of a good critical censure. But if the ego is beyond this, an agency that is "other-worldly" then the best we can do is construct arguments and descriptions that are in the field of where this transcendence leaves the mundane. — Constance
It's like ethics: we don't know what it IS, but we do know how we experience it and talk about it, and these can be objects of analysis. — Constance
Values were increasingly the property of the individual, not society. So instead of humanly warm contact, based on a shared, intuitively obvious understanding of right and wrong, public behaviour was cool, reserved, hard and sober, governed by strict personal self-control. Correct behaviour lay in the observance of correct procedures. Most obviously, it obeyed the letter of the law (for who could say what its spirit was?) and it was rational. It was logical, consistent, and coherent; or else it obeyed unquestioned modern realities such as the power of numbers, market forces and technology.
An heir of the Enlightenment, Durkheim championed the liberation of individuals from religious dogmas, but he also feared that with their release from tradition individuals would fall into a state of anomie — a condition that is best thought of as “normlessness” — which he believed to be a core pathology of modern life.
Whereas in techno-culture, 'how things truly are' is devoid of value, meaningless, as 'what truly is' are the elemental particles or forces of physics, within which the individual has emerged due to fortuitous circumstances. — Wayfarer
This is suggesting of the idea of 'higher self' or 'higher consciousness'. You find that in Fichte, who distinguished the finite or empirical ego from the pure or infinite ego. The activity of this "pure ego" can be discovered by a "higher intuition". It is also reminiscent of Schelling's 'intellectual intuition' or Jacques Maritain's 'intuition of being'. (Dermot Moran says that the German idealists retained some fragments of the 'doctrine of illumination' which had othewise died out in Western philosophy during the preceeding centuries; Maritain, of course, was a Catholic philosopher.) — Wayfarer
I'm receptive to the idea; I think the term 'transcendental ego' is a plausible synonym for the 'higher self'. But it's hardly respectable in current philosophical circles; you will find it in Rudolf Steiner or theosophy but not in existentialism or phenomenology where it will usually be rejected as occult and or new age. — Wayfarer
If you read Vedanta, the ego is precisely what has to be 'slayed' by the aspirant (chela) so as to awaken to the Self (see The Teachings of Ramana Maharishi). There is a parallel in New Testament in that the disciple is urged to 'lose his life for My sake', where Adam is the personification of ego and Jesus the higher consciousness. Buddhism rejects the idea of 'higher self', or any self, altogether, although arguably the Buddha Nature teachings can be mapped against it (with strict caveats). — Wayfarer
In my view, the problem of ethics is in the constitution of modernity itself. 'Being modern', apart from being born at a particular moment in history, is also a distinctive and novel form of consciousness, based on a new conception of what it means to be an individual. This article about Max Weber casts some light: — Wayfarer
And also this one on Emile Durkheim — Wayfarer
I noticed, when studying Buddhism, that one of the supreme virtues of the Buddha was yathābhūtaṃ, 'to see things as they truly are'. It was simply assumed that this was one of the attributes of the Buddha's omniscience. Whereas in techno-culture, 'how things truly are' is devoid of value, meaningless, as 'what truly is' are the elemental particles or forces of physics, within which the individual has emerged due to fortuitous circumstances.
Food for thought, that's all. — Wayfarer
Husserl, too. Kierkegaard, and Levinas, and there are so many who present the case, provide a contextual framework for serious discussions about what enlightenment and liberation really are. — Constance
What is MEANING?? This is the question. Not Frege's "sense" but meaning, like this lance in my kidney, or my love of Ravel. Value is the center of philosophical concern. It is first philosophy. Ask, what is the Good? This is where an inquiry into human existence begins. NOT what is reality? This begs the question: why do you care what reality is? — Constance
These are deep problems, I'm not proposing any solution. But I think what has to be worked out is, if enlightenment and liberation are the goals, what do they mean? Christianity doesn't often utilise that kind of terminology, especially Protestant Christianity, which casts everything in the light of sin and redemption, rather than ignorance and enlightenment. That's a shadow to the whole enterprise and whatever philosophical proposal is made to address these issues has to navigate these treachorous seas! — Wayfarer
But there is a response to your rhetorical question: we care about what reality is, because, in Aristotle's phrase, 'we seek to know'. The desire to know, to understand, to make sense out of existence, is surely a deep drive. — Wayfarer
my conviction is that only in the same place where the modern technical world took its origin can we also prepare a conversion (Umkehr) of it. In other words, this cannot happen by taking over Zen Buddhism or other Eastern experiences of the world. For this conversion of thought we need the help of the European tradition and a new appropriation of it. Thought will be transformed only through thought that has the same origin and determination. — Heidegger
philosophy will be unable to effect any immediate change in the current state of the world. This is true not only of philosophy but of all purely human reflection and endeavor. Only a god can save us.
SPIEGEL: You attribute to the Germans a special task?
Heidegger: Yes, in the sense explained in the dialogues with Hölderlin.
SPIEGEL: Do you believe that Germans have a special qualification for this conversion?
Heidegger: I am thinking of the special inner kinship between the German language and the language of the Greeks and their thought. This is something that the French confirm for me again and again today. When they begin to think, they speak German. They assure [me] that they do not succeed with their own language.
When they begin to think, they speak German.
But the proof is in the pudding, a conversation about doubt, moral realism and the rest. Otherwise, it is just a generic complaint. Do you think the Buddha in his phenomenological prime, had doubts?The consequent moral realist has suspended all self-doubt and anything that could induce it. — baker
This guy was so naïve, so simplistic sometimes... It really makes one wonder about the lack of street wisdom of some overly theoretical philosophers, who don't have much patience for empirical facts, nor any awareness of their own cultural biases apparently. Also there is this "manifest destiny" of the German volk here, as the "thinking volk"... Ja ja. My grandfather really liked their metaphysics in the camps. — Olivier5
Hey thanks, I found that Der Spiegel interview you refer to. Obviously a very important cultural artifact. I’ve never read Being and Time, although many decades ago, I was friends with someone in whom it triggered an intense cathartic realisation, and I formed the view that it is probably an important book. On the other hand, like a lot of people, I have been put off by Heidegger’s involvement with Nazism and the suggestion that his philosophy leans towards fascism. I think about reading it, but I haven’t taken the time yet. — Wayfarer
I gloomily suspect that this is true, but I have no inkling if it is being done. If any of Heidegger’s successors are doing that, I’d like to know, but I suspect not. I am familiar with the anecdote of Heidegger being caught reading from D T Suzuki and saying ‘if I understand this man aright, this is what I’ve been trying to say all along’. But I take his point that we can’t assimilate Zen Buddhism tout courte. We - westerners - have created the cultural predicament which we suffer from, and we have to find a way out of it on those terms. I think that’s what he’s saying. — Wayfarer
SPIEGEL: You attribute to the Germans a special task?
Heidegger: Yes, in the sense explained in the dialogues with Hölderlin.
SPIEGEL: Do you believe that Germans have a special qualification for this conversion?
Heidegger: I am thinking of the special inner kinship between the German language and the language of the Greeks and their thought. This is something that the French confirm for me again and again today. When they begin to think, they speak German. They assure [me] that they do not succeed with their own language.
Gee, I bet the French just loved that. :blush:
Sorry for the digression. — Wayfarer
Might as well have said ‘only a miracle’. — Wayfarer
You have to see that Heidegger believed that language is an integral part of the construction of Being, — Constance
That really is the issue. I think of it in terms of Heraclitus and Parmenides: the ego that is conversing here with you is memory that seizes the present, and this is a constant process, this generative and generated self. But there is that mysterious present, isn't there? This is not an abstraction, not a Zenoistic contrived play with time and space. The Kierkegaardian analysis has two fronts that I see. One is the remembrance that we actually exist, and existence is not an idea, and Hegel thereby misrepresents what it is to be a person, for we are apart from the conceptual agreement that circulates and steals our identity. The other is the paradox of sin: We are only sinful when we posit spirit, for in this positing we see our alienation from the eternal. His Knight of Faith is one (beyond what K is capable of) who can make this qualitative movement into faith, and be here, in the world, a baker, a butcher, but reside with God as well. As I understand it, this is understood in a temporal analysis of our existence. A long story having to do with historical sin and culture and the turning away from our primordial relationship with God.One of the qualities Kierkegaard exhibited in The Concept of Anxiety is that the "self" who loves or not is always represented as a result of a process geared toward completing a certain end. The possibility of being an agent is presented in contrast to that.
The prospect of selecting between "competing" desires is interrupted by another dimension where the options are not easily laid side by side. — Valentinus
That is fine, and not what my disagreement is about. My point is about the idea that he "attributes to the Germans a special task" via the German language. Which strikes me as nationalo-centric.
To illustrate my disagreement, IF language is an integral part of the construction of Being, in my interpretation of this sentence, it would imply that a human being speaking several languages is a more complete being than one who speaks only one language. But this is not the conclusion Heidegger draws. Rather for him, who to my knowledge spoke only German, perhaps with a smattering of greek, learning another language such as English or French would have been closer to a compromission with lower forms of thought than those possible in German. There is a striking parallel with the idea that racial diversity is a problem rather than an asset.
His philosophy, his world-view, was consistent with nazism, which he adhered to voluntarily. The Dasein is Hitler-compatible. THAT is the problem. — Olivier5
One aspect of this all game -- and a reason why I think his Spiegel interview remark about French philosophers speaking German was a kind of joke but a telling one -- is that a great deal of 19th century German philosophy can be seen as a response to 18th century French philosophy, the time when Voltaire was advising Frederick the Great in Prussia. Followed by the revolution and napoleonic empire which swept over Prussia. By the 1950s though, the relation was reversed and many French philosophers spoke of Dasein, Umwelt and Gestalt... Here too I see a parallel between Hitler's revenge after the humiliation of WW1. — Olivier5
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