Ciao. — Leontiskos

Bella ciao.

For Thomism matter is inscrutable and form is intelligible, and reality is a combination of the two. — Leontiskos

Which is an adaption of Aristotelian hylomorphism. I can really see the sense of that. I think it's an awareness that is overall lacking in Eastern philosophy. (I wonder if we would have templates, a concept so ubiquitous in modern manufacturing and industrial organisation, had we not had the Forms to begin with.)

The article says:

Metaphysical realism is not the same as scientific realism — Paine

I get that, but in practice they are often not differentiated.

The point of the phenomenological article I referenced is pertinent. It begins:

From a phenomenological perspective, in everyday life, we see the objects of our experience such as physical objects, other people, and even ideas as simply real and straightforwardly existent. In other words, they are “just there.” We don’t question their existence; we view them as facts.

When we leave our house in the morning, we take the objects we see around us as simply real, factual things—this tree, neighboring buildings, cars, etc. This attitude or perspective, which is usually unrecognized as a perspective, Edmund Husserl terms the “natural attitude” or the “natural theoretical attitude.” ...

...Husserl claimed that “being” can never be collapsed entirely into being in the empirical world: any instance of actual being, he argued, is necessarily encountered upon a horizon that encompasses facticity but is larger than facticity. Indeed, the very sense of facts of consciousness as such, from a phenomenological perspective, depends on a wider horizon of consciousness that usually remains unexamined.

Today's culture is inclined to view the natural attitude - call it direct realism for argument's sake - as normative, and the questioning of it an imposition on basic common sense. Whereas classical philosophy East and West understands the human condition as fundamentally imperfect or flawed - the myth of the Fall, or of Avidya/ignorance (not to be conflated, although with some common grounds.) That is even present in Heidegger's 'verfallen' albeit shorn of any religious undertone, foreshadowed by the last paragraph of that passage. But then existentialism and phenomenology recognise this, in a way that Anglo philosophy generally does not.

That part of the soul, then, which we call mind (by mind I mean that part by which the soul thinks and forms judgements) has no actual existence until it thinks. — De Anima, 429a 16, translated by W.S Hett

That really resonates with me. Mind as the unmanifest until actualised by sense-contact.

Maybe I will get Rödl’s book and find out what he makes of these texts. — Paine

Here's an earlier (and briefer) essay Categories of the Temporal: An Inquiry into the Forms of the Finite Understanding

Maybe I will get Rödl’s book and find out what he makes of these texts. — Paine

I hope you do!

Here's an earlier (and briefer) essay Categories of the Temporal: An Inquiry into the Forms of the Finite Understanding — Wayfarer

Thanks for this. By now I almost speak Rodelian -- his diction is surprisingly simple, if his ideas are not -- but this looks helpful.

- It looks like Rödl has an AcademiaEdu page where he makes some of his papers available. Maybe there is some article there that would be able to make the relevant arguments freely and publicly accessible.

He's not the kind of philosopher who is ever going to be easy. The wikipedia entry says, quoting the book we're discussing, 'His main influence is Hegel, and he sees himself as introducing and restating Hegel's Absolute Idealism in a historical moment that is wrought with misgivings about the merits and even the mere possibility of such a philosophy.' He's kind of an incarnation of German idealism.



(I've been doing a house-sit over the Christmas period which ends Sunday so hopefully will be able to make more headway with the text from next week.)

@WayfarerYes, there's a short review of Self-Consciousness & Objectivity there as well that's worth reading, if only because the author, Peter Hanks, gives an unsympathetic account of Rödl's views that highlights how we must not interpret Rödl, if we're to make any sense of him.

there's a short review of Self-Consciousness & Objectivity there — J

Where?

He's kind of an incarnation of German idealism. — Wayfarer

Except Hegel was never such a heart-throb. Gotta say, though, that for me the toughest sell so far in S-C&O is the connection to something genuinely Hegelian. I haven't finished the book yet and was interested to learn -- if the above-mentioned Peter Hanks is right -- that there's actually very little in it about Idealism, which was my impression so far.

https://www.academia.edu/110564586/Self_Consciousness_and_Objectivity_An_Introduction_to_Absolute_Idealism

Ah yes, I recall that that review was the first thing I encountered after noticing the book title.

In respect of why there's not much mention of idealism per se - his book is not about idealism as an historical doctrine or school of philosophy. It's more focussed on demonstrating that the very structure of thought and self-consciousness entails idealism. Implicit rather than explicit, you could say.

I appreciate everyone's effort to save me some bucks. I am frugal by nature and habit.

But I will go through the front door and buy the book. I have read enough primary text of both Aristotle and Hegel to make swimming through a bunch of conflicting opinions before trying the book itself more work than I was afraid of taking on in the first place.

The wikipedia entry says, quoting the book we're discussing, 'His main influence is Hegel, and he sees himself as introducing and restating Hegel's Absolute Idealism in a historical moment that is wrought with misgivings about the merits and even the mere possibility of such a philosophy.' He's kind of an incarnation of German idealism. — Wayfarer

Pardon me. The only way for him to be correct, is if he is indeed the reincarnation of Hegel, in a literal sense. Otherwise, he's interpreting Hegelian Idealism in a figurative, metaphorical way. But Hegelianism can only be true if one of the following is the case:

1) It ended with Hegel himself (Absolute Idealism, that is).
2) It did not end with Hegel himself, because Absolute Idealism can be turned into Dialectical Materialism.
3) It did not end with Hegel himself, because reincarnation exists, so Hegel has reincarnated and is alive today, just with a different name. But the photograph of that man looks a bit like Hegel himself, doesn't it?

What option do I choose? The first one: Absolute Idealism ended with Hegel himself. Absolute Idealism cannot be turned into Dialectical Materialism. Those are two different philosophies. And there is no such thing as reincarnation.

I am curious if you meant to link to Gerson's article rather than Wang's with the same title. If so, there is a comment I would like to make about past conversations between us on the topic.

I do not want to mount up for a new Anabasis against Gerson. But I will read Rödl to see how his view of Aristotle matches up with Gerson's concept of self-reflexivity and his Plotinus point of view of Aristotle that I have highlighted in the past.

The idea of a mean between extremes is interesting. I need to sit with that for a bit in order to avoid saying something off the cuff.

These are some of the papers from Rödl's Academia.edu page that popped out at me. Some of them are extremely closely related to @J's interest in Frege. All of them are written by Rödl himself:

• Logic and Self-Consciousness (2022)
• Self-Consciousness, Negation, and Disagreement (2017)
• I think – Mrs. Smith thinks (2020)
• Self-Consciousness and Knowledge (2013)
• The force and the content of judgment (2020)
• Logical Form as a Relation to the Object (2006)
• Judgment as Synthesis (2009 - Book Review)
• Joint action and recursive consciousness of consciousness (2015)

And the book review that J pointed out:

• Self-Consciousness and Objectivity: An Introduction to Absolute Idealism (2018 - Peter Hanks)

am curious if you meant to link to Gerson's article rather than Wang's with the same title. — Paine

I did intend to refer that article by Hua Wang 'The Unity of Intellect in Aristotle's D'Anima'. As I said, I found it searching for the theme 'the unity of knower and known' which as mentioned returns many articles on ancient and medieval philosophy about that theme which I think is an important subject in philosophy both East and West.

The only way for him to be correct, is if he is indeed the reincarnation of Hegel, in a literal sense. — Arcane Sandwich

I said that Rödl is like the 'current incarnation of German idealism'. 'Incarnate' means 'in the flesh'. He's representing Hegelian idealism for the current audience. That's all I meant.

A lot of material there, but then, these are online and relatively brief so probably good introductions to Rödl.

Incidentally, that Google search for the term 'knower and known' generates in part this AI overview:

Historical context
* The idea of the knower and the known has been a philosophical problem for a long time
* The metaphysics of Descartes contributed to the modern form of this problem by separating the knower from the known
* Science has also contributed to this problem by insisting that subjective knowledge is not real knowledge

I haven't read your guys' entire exchange, but based off of my horrible interactions with @Arcane in this thread I can guess how it went down. Either way, I don't know why @Arcane keeps quoting that given the real irony is that @Arcane originally told me I was too nice and to tone it down; and then, when I did, they said I am too mean :lol:

You give me green stop-sign vibes @Arcane. **sigh**

You give me green stop-sign vibes Arcane. **sigh** — Bob Ross

I mean, have you read my pseudonym for this Forum?

But then I have to ask: am I breaking the law here? I don't think so. So, you can't say that I'm completely chaotic. I'm not causing a disturbance, or at least I think not.

And this one replies to the Hanks review I mentioned -- they make a good pair to read:

https://www.academia.edu/110564453/The_force_and_the_content_of_judgment

I said that Rödl is like the 'current incarnation of German idealism'. 'Incarnate' means 'in the flesh'. He's representing Hegelian idealism for the current audience. That's all I meant — Wayfarer

Sure, and all I'm saying is that Absolute Idealism, as Hegel himself understood it, entails that whoever believes in Absolute Idealism in a literal sense must also believe in reincarnation in a literal sense. Hegelianism without reincarnation is like decaffeinated coffee: it's not the real thing.

Understanding Sebastian Rödl is quite challenging in its own right without such digressions. If you're interested, some references to his papers are given above.

Thanks. I'll see if I can understand those papers, it seems like I won't be able to, so I can't clam that I will (understand him, that is).