objectivism – Unexpected Objects

Post-modernism’s Worth.

When we are too close to an event, we talk about it as from a distance. That is, what we say is automatically distanced from the event, a maximum distance. The event is thus, by this occurrence, an object. As opposed to our psychotherapeutic model, the closer we are to an event, the more dishonest we are about its true bearings, that is, the truth of the matter, why it is that the (the wholeness of the) event has occurred the way it has. The impetus and the reaction can be come upon as an included item, a truth in-itself, only when we are distanced from the event. The truth of an object, as opposed to the True Object, can only be viewed in its truth from a distance. The equation is thus of inversion, of ratio.

Here then we may have a basis upon which to properly view foundational post-modern writers, namely, Derrida, Deleuze and Guittari, but others also. To wit: Their descriptions were from a basis too close to the event, such that they attempted to quickly and finally establish a ground for the event; the event being thus so profound and significant, they were compelled to offer a reason.

They were not wrong, only rash.

It is analogous to an explosion. We have now the data from the explosion, having encountered it ourselves, but also come across the initial first hand rationalization and fact crunching reports of the explosion itself – with that, subsequent explosions, and now the reports and experience of the aftermath(s) of explosions, we can now safely report upon the truth of the whole event.

The Significant Event, Part 4a: The Problem with Speculative Realism.

Individuals nevertheless still have such significant experiences, and these experiences frame the existential problem noted above (part 3), or for my terms, how a person is oriented upon objects. The significant event, or more properly said, the question of the pocket veto distinguishes that which is fidelitous to the Event from that which finds recourse in the True Object of the pure multiple. This is to say that the question that is brought to bare of such event is referred to the question of its reality, as in the previous segment, the question “Is this real?” The answering of this question posed by the individual thus solves the irony present in the very situation, to wit, either I have been privy to a moment of inspiration that raises me above the State of Reality enough to be only at least partially subject to the State, and thereby be in a position to sufficiently address the oppression of the State, which is the real answer, the answer that derives from an (Kant) intuited object, the transcendent, or, I am not subject to the State.

***

We thus take the similarity between what I have just proposed and the Speculative Realists, Graham Harman and Quentin Miessaloux in particular, as an occasion by which to further the effort to gain the veto, but I will be addressing more of Quentin Miessaloux with his primacy of math over the tendency for transcendental thinking. It comes down to this, the issue brought up earlier in this extended essay: Even if mathematics reflects in an arch-fossil manner an object antecedent to thought, the conveyance of such object is subject to discourse of the strong correlationalist sort.

But we should take a moment to see what Speculative Realism really involves as a philosophical position (if that designation really refers anymore to any specificity of discourse).

The usual conventional philosophical paradigm involves the subject and the object, or what is found in the Cartesian “cogito ergo sum”. The veto we are after in these essays involves a significant event by which the split that identifies the subject and object becomes apparent. This split is the moment that can be addressed through considering the Cartesian/Copernican Revolution. The significance that SR is concerned with is this establishment, in simple meaning, the “I think, therefore I am”, a basic polemic between the thinking subject and its presence in the world, a presence that implicates a segregated element, whereby thought is distinguished from the object of its operation. This is where Graham Harman of noted Object Oriented Ontology takes up his solution by the object –> object as opposed to the subject –> object query –which is a real endeavor, a venture posed upon an un investigated given by which possibility may arise; hence ‘speculative realism’. The problem supposedly since that time of Descartes has been how to reconcile this apparent subject/object duality. The Speculative Realists propose that such a reconciliation is based upon an incorrect assessment of the situation at hand. It appears SR and I agree on this point, yet where the SR are involved with the discovering the object along a conventional (real) route, and while the subject is likewise tied into such an object, I propose and so venture towards the effect of human consciousness that allows for such posturing. The real objectival discursive situation marked by the SR, interestingly enough, creates a viable opening by which to discuss a necessary divergence from such a real conventional method. Knowing of how such conventional reality of the object may be addressed is an ironic venture.

The proposal of solving the Cartesian problem of the subject and the object along an objective path is dubious at best. For one, it supposes that humanity before a certain time had no such apprehension of duality. The problem is supposed particular, to have came about not merely at a specific time, but due to a specific discourse, which for such SR and object oriented philosophers, means a specific way of thinking, again indicating that thought and discourse are intertwined in a causal historical situation. While Graham Harman appears to reduce his Object Oriented problem to how two objects may touch — as we should see, the ‘object’ that is the Cartesian ‘subject’ and the ‘object’ that is the ‘object’, as well as ‘regular’ objects, thus may follow his description of what all objects actually are — so as to allow their interaction in reality, Quentin Miessalloux seems content to take the problem to correlationalist reasoning, where objects reflected in consciousness tend to argue back into present objects only, the discourse of objects relying upon a thinking subject that reasons objects back into the scheme of reason such that no object exists outside the knowing subject. He thereby argues due to this posed limit that there are objects outside of the correlationalist cycle.

Yet despite what discursive moves one may make to therefore be able to attain a relationship consistent entirely of objects, the question thus begs its own determination:

Is thought influenced by discourse or is discourse influenced by thought?

Is there an influence that bridges these elements in a directional manner?

Was thought going on and then discourse came about due to the human being thinking?

Was there some sort of communication occurring before thought came to be thought?

Did discourse arise in the same motion as thought?

One can take these questions in any number of ways. Nevertheless, we can address these types of questions specifically to SR, because both of these authors’ endeavors can be accounted by the significant event. The problem with Harman is his discourse relies and draws upon ideas that are taken as given for their ability to make their arguments. In other words, the objects of past authors, their thesis and ideas and such, are indeed touching Harman so that he can use theirs to support his ideas, despite his problemitization of how it can be so, and, the objects he is using to situate his thesis appear to be touching. He appears thus to be drawing from some aspect or element undisclosed to his argument, some element that is not an object, so he can thereby make his argument that all reality is constituted by objects, and thereby propose a real-true system. I suspect that his system stems from the same maxim that I have proposed, ie. there is nothing beyond discourse, and transcribes, as I do, ‘terms’ as ‘objects’; he thereby develops a system of relating objects to account for reality. But his thereby seems to suggest that the route I propose in my essays is more salient, accounting for more of the facts, because any scheme relating objects at most describes a particular real moment, a particular conventional True Object in necessary opposition to another True Object, and at best describes the individual in reality. Granted, he is making a statement that will go in the annals of conventional philosophy, but we will leave him for now in his own right to fill out the object of reality.

The problem with Miessaloux appears for now little more suited to irony. His argument is that math relays the truth, and that the situation of math thereby gains a true-real situation of the individual. He suggests that it is a particular type of reasoning that gets in the way of seeing the reality that is the truth of math. From this he proposes that there are things that exist outside of thought, things he calls ‘arch fossils’, for example, skeletons of dinosaurs suggest that there were living creatures that relied upon such skeletons that existed before humans began to think about them, things that exist anterior to humans thinking about them.

With this in mind, in the effort still to gain the meaning of the veto, next we consider Quentin Meillassoux, and then Matin Hiedegger, their ideas on science, in the following parts.

End part 4a

The Impossible, part 4: Spiritual Oneness and the State of Incorporated Reality.

The operative question that motivates the essays on the impossible can be formulated by the questions of determinism and contingency: Is the random aspect of the physical universe of science responsible or otherwise enacted or present in the random aspect that involves human choice, such that choice is determined by the state of the universe, or, is the human being a mediator or mediation of an extra or supra universal element and the physical world, where the random aspect of the physical is but that supra element of the human, that the physical universe is contingent upon the series of choice?

We should see that these questions remain salient so far as the terms themselves reflect or are capable of reflecting True Objects of a particular scheme. The impossible, then, lay at the exposure or decoupling of such metaphysical structures, at the complete shredding of all discursive-conceptual methods for meaning, including such conceptions that would end this with an ineffective nothingness or nihilism.

The reader should be clear in his or her orientation upon this reading. This is not a discernment of ‘either you’re in or you’re out’ situation; but, this statement assumes that the reader is indeed oriented in this way, or at least can understand from that perspective, and thus has been coming upon a sort of intuitive rebuttal, that some sort of antagonistic anxiety is cultivating the response that places the argument for nonsense, ripe to be useless, ridiculous, or for a term extrapolated to nothing less than impossible. This is the sign of irony; the argument presents the dissolution of its representation. The attachment to or faith in the True Object come upon by its dissolution as an indication of another True Object is, as Soren Kierkegaard rightly situated, despair, but its opposite elicitation is elation. The continuation through despair, and not the Sartrean revolt from it, is the revealing of the impossible into discourse, into the logic involved in the meaning of terms, it’s implicated scheme, that has become itself ripe to speak of the impossible in its impossibility, that what has so far been seen as the polemical position to reality is but a discursive situation of a modernist sort, which is to say, of a One True Universe, that is or has developed itself to the point of being capable of revealing its own limitation through its limiting definition of objects, such that these objects not only argue their determination but their contingency as well, and ultimately, that because this situation has arisen only and of the the supposed common humanity of meaning, that this common humanity can no longer be upheld, where the subject agent of will likewise is seen as a faulty conception. The irony is that the universe counts as a ‘one’ in which humans are not segregate, and that the universe, as a conceptual scheme that comes about in humans, has developed the meaning of its unsound concept. Hence, the concept brought to its objective ends is despair, yet it moved through is the phenomenon itself, an ironic reversal or upending of reality. The revolt from despair is a re-establishing of reality, as well as its historical truth.

The potential at any moment for the revealing the full extent of the contradictory feature of any conventional discourse evidences the true qualitative motion of history and is reflected in the mood or attitude of the era. What has been defined, at this late date, as modernist and post-modernist expresses the oscillation of history to non-history, and by this we should surmise that the history of which science designates evolution and the development of human beings and all its stages, is much, much older than what physics and anthropology has determined. In our moment we are struggling with the situation that has deconstructed the subject, what heretofore I have called the subject-object. The natural and automatic ‘revolt’ has been back into modernist objectivism, which is for our time, reality, the ideologized capitalized corporate structure. The conception that is left to fully dismantle the tower of righteous babble, since we have already seen how the human determines object contingency, thus involves the revealing of the object unto itself, which is to say, how it is the object itself that determines human contingency. The resistance to such exposure, the subject of the object of capitalism is the incorporation of the the effect of human ignorance into the exaltation of its own designation, the subject (-object) in despair of its own existence; in effect, this is the building of the ‘God-human’ out of the oppressing state of reality, which is to say, out of the real, inviolate, and essential human subject of faith. To reiterate: The effect of the inability to withdraw faith from the calculus of reality is capitalized upon, and this, also as effect, reduces reality to a real particular assertion of power that is enacted by the capitalist upon humanity. The con of capitalism is reality itself maintained through a ploy of the individual with free will.

The reason we must emphasize ‘effect’ has to do with the difference between authentic human interpersonal relations and the thoughts which overdetermine the activity of a larger common human whole. The traversing of what I shall term ‘local’ interactions to a ‘distant’ humanity calls forth the ideological negotiations of faith concerning True Objects, and thus the various religious (see below) assertions of Truth that become capitalized upon in the reducing capitalistic fetishism; in the avoidance of such objects of faith, one must speak about effects (see my earlier essays, particularly, “Aphilosophy, Convention, Faith and God”).

Yet, before we describe in detail the impossible situation of reality that most of know intuitively, we must begin with tying up some loose ends.

Whereas ‘before’, in the subjective ‘phase’, so to speak, such argument come upon was seen to indicate some sort of spiritual basis, some transcendent or otherwise meta or supra reality, some ‘other than regular’ world that lay at some recouping of total meaning that then indicated a Truth of the universe, that couples with regular reality. The idea is that usual reality is recouped or accounted for by a type of ‘psychic’ or thoughtful ‘centered-ness’, that in turn presents usual reality against a more real ‘One’ reality’. There are two rebuttals to this. The first concerns ‘logical’ discursive failure, as Western minds might consider metaphysics, and the second, spiritual or philosophical failure – and see that what is philosophical is meant in a more Eastern mode, such as Tantric or Zen Buddhist can be considered. The union of these two coordinations represent the one possibility of reality. Religion, or what can be called spiritual ideology, in general reflects belief that corresponds the logical and spiritual in this respect. Recently, Non-philosophy-as-method appears to resonate this ‘one’ posture, but its move is incomplete; this is why non-philosophy represents convention in-the-last-instance, the ‘least overdetermined’ object of reality, despite its ‘regular’ non-philosophical meaning incited in the ‘Future Christ’.

It is not difficult to see, though, that metaphysical speculation, which includes all forms of real speculation, will not relinquish its hold upon the agent as a fixed social construct. The subject object of faith will not allow reality to be disturbed, and the linear progress of history will continue as the individual subject-object remains under the dominion of a particular effective power of the doctrine of free will. We can only suppose that Non-philosophy will be taken as another philosophical object, even as we redefine what philosophy is or re-term it, and that its Future Christ will become another speckle in the lineage of philosophical ideas.

One issue in this that will be addressed later is the point of elucidating the truth of the matter if no one wants to or is capable of hearing or understanding it.

If we can concur that this can be a logical assessment of the facts thus far (see my essays on The Impossible, parts 1,2,3) then it is here from which we may derive all the facets of ontological and cosmological discourses, their arguments, including religion, philosophy and science. These purport to explain what can be called ‘the argument of the One’, which is always the basis of every reality, and which can amount to the query, how do we reconcile the random universe with the random human choice? We have just indicated above that the answer is routinely reconciled in having the universe as basic, and the human being as a thing of the universe, and that even taking the human being as central, the universe is situated likewise as basic. Science proposes to be able to discover or uncover the true thing (True Object) that is the universe, and psychology proposes that we may discover the true thing (True Subject-Object) of the human being, that we may discover the mechanisms and or functioning of the universal human, a thing of the universe. Religious and or spiritual thought also propose to be able to offer a true One of reality, but is not limited in the same way as science; spiritual proposals may use any number of rhetorical devices, but their arguments likewise draw from the sensibility of a knowable One.

We can see here that the historical solution to reality always tends toward falling into the True Object, as I define it, of faith; the bare human in the world is one of a past ignorance toward an informed future. The situation is always of the world of True Objects, since it is quickly apparent that there is a world of things that humans must negotiate in order to survive, but this imperative then colludes with the terms and derives reality proper. Any deviation from this endeavor, of things, as definition might distinguish various things from other things that are not things, is typically called ‘spiritual’ and is correspondent with a situation that occurs ‘within’ the knowing subject individual; psychology is scientific investigation into this ‘spirit’, and thus accounting for the motion that sees the universe as primary to any investigation, amounts to a ‘world religion’.

The motion of spiritual endeavor, though, the activity of psychic investigation, is taken up along two vectors of discourse that again collude ( I will take to the ethical implications later) in a quadripartite:

1) A practice of instruction that suggests the individual toward a correct understanding-and-practice, an experience-understanding gained by the individual. This is nothing more than an assertion of proper method. The Eastern philosophical teachings that propose a relieving of the individual of all true objects to the ‘meta-nirvana’, so to speak, recourses similarly to Sartre-esque motion. From a coming to a realization of the sangsaric phantasmagoria of temporal objects, the ‘enlightened’ individual may come to more intuitive or aware consciousness of bodily operations and how such operations may effect the individual’s appropriation of conceptualization of objective situations. The various coordinations amount to the methods traditionally call ‘martial arts’, as these stem from ‘right’ thought, action, attitude, etcetera, but extrapolated into achievement and practice for ability can said to include any proper method.

2) A practice of ‘following ones bliss’, so to speak, where the individual is disclosed upon his or her own motion as proper unto itself. Whether the individual sees itself as some sort of cosmic or psychic center or entity, in communion with a spiritual source, is worthy or unworthy, the product of such calculus is the same; the motion does not avoid this classification. When undertaken thoughtfully in experience as a thing unto itself, as a motion with ends of itself and not upholding a proper object as projected ends, this vector develops in a more ‘proper’ Sartre-existentialist motion, as I describe in my previous essay, “post-post-modern-modernism”. The individual ‘revolts’ from this precipitated abyss of nothingness and thereby finds true agency for the negotiations of established ideological structures, or True Objects, and appropriates proper methods based upon given routes for such methods, though most are not systematized to a degree as the Eastern martial arts to be called such. Of course, the individual of (now) free agency would never admit to their activity being determined, neither that they are fitting their agency into preexisting ideological structures of True Objects, it is more likely that such a one would adamantly assert that they have created or established something entirely new, but he is capitalizing upon the gap that is maintained in the revolt; the power of the True Object is gained through its becoming a fetish, the ‘magic’ that arises in the real denial of the gap (see below). Obviously, such agency is supplied by the old adage “ignorance is bliss”; it is similar to my assertion that computers function by water moving through vessels to fill rubber balloons, obviously I don’t care at all about how they might really work, but nevertheless, they still work for me. Hence it is useless to talk about ‘more real’ reality, but only effects of reality – the power that humans appear to have over objects is a real effect.

These two ideologic situations can be coaxed out of the present East-West ideological paradigms, where it can be seen each ideological-spiritual base involves the same polemical motive elements. Respectively, though aggravated argument can blur any statement of character, it is not difficult to draw an umbrella over the West to characterize it with individualism and as well see the European-American ideal of manifest destiny as an individualized motif. The individual, moved by a ‘invisible hand’ starts out and motivated by his or her own impetus, strives and thereby creates their own world united in individuality. The East, similarly generalized, contains individuals ordained in their incarnations under a celestial dictate that is evidenced in social order. Noted that such generalizations are not absolute in their designations; the West has an overreaching and implied structure of order, and the East has individuals that act upon individual ‘karmic’ designations. Indeed every human place carries these designations in their own way. Again, what can argue the inadequacy of such a generalization are based upon random factors that real investigation seeks to discredit in method, and by its effort establish the unified ‘One True’ universe.

( Note: This is the third-moving-into-the-fourth of non philosophy, but, as I have said elsewhere, the non-philosophical fourth is still but one fourth of two possibilities, such that we have a quadripartite of a quadripartite that derives its meaning from the philosophical object that is non-philosophy as it represents itself as (non-) cornered in the Real, extended by radical immanence into the Future Christ, that has inevitably been established by it.)

Again, the same problem poses itself through every route. The persistent aspect of real inquiry into True things that obscures the truth for the certitude of the One Reality can be called a ‘gap’. As to our discussion so far, we consider universal randomness, human randomness, universal basis, and human psychic basis. Conceptual gaps become presented in a critical consideration relating any to each of these categories, but are always overcome with reference to and or correspondent with whichever category is taken to be basic to the investigation. Francios Laruelle has indicated as much of philosophy in his non-philosophy. When the universe is taken as basic, then all discourse refers to its truth, that once the human mind is understood, a proper linking of causal relations will be made to universal physical randomness. When choice is basic, likewise physical interpretations will be able to be understood by a contextual consciousness, such as free will. Where the universal thing is basic, the human will be accounted for as an explained thing; where the psyche is basic, universal structures will likewise become realized. And, where choice, discourse will reconcile determinacy; where the universal true thing, randomness will be accounted for. Any combination of these four categories yield a correspondent solution oriented by what is taken as basic, but each solution, when applied dialectically to the possibility of other bases, will yield a conceptual gap, a contradiction that then necessitates a move upon, elliptically, in condensing and expanding substantive real quality, back into the base as truth of the matter in question.

Of course, the distinctions of these categories do not argue absolute categories and are not upheld, rather suspended, in the activity of consideration; each operating base organizes a particular matrix of transcendental and immanent elements within the discursive posture (see my earlier essay, “Aphilosophy, Convnetion, Faith and God”). Take for example the statement, “I am a human being.” In considering the statement’s veracity, any term of the phrase will reside in a transcendent or immanent state while one term is considered. For a universal basic query, the term “I” considered may yield an assertion of evolutionary physical traits acquired through a natural selection such that the term “I” is qualified; in such suspension, “am a human being” may state transcendent qualifiers that reify the universal proposition, while offering immanent qualifiers in the subsequent explanation likewise. The human query may refer the term “I” to a universal evolutionary stage, but then qualify the universal evolution to an immanent fact of knowing, thereby reifying the meaning of the basic human. The humanity of the universal, it the case here, and the humanity of the human position may have exchange due to the ignorance of the contradiction involved in approaching absolute bases. The term “human”, though understood as an object in-itself, as indicating a True object between such arenas (universal/human), is already a contradiction in argument, since one cannot have an evolutionary product decide upon its own agency to be evolutionarily determined. Yet also the contradictions are suspended within bases likewise in so much as ‘I’ may be a ‘human being’, but when I go to figure out what a human being is, ‘I’ am not including the ‘I’ in the consideration; ‘I’ have become immanent to the discussion, and by the time I may have found out what a human being is, I have probably situated it in a universal setting yet while avoiding again the basis of my evolutionary redundancy for the sake of arguing the human center of being human, so the evolution has become transcendent. Different terms and the statements that support argument pronounce or otherwise punctuate different ordinances of transcendental-immanent structure according to the base from which it is argued; this feature of discourse can be called a ‘differend’, the gap that is reconciled in a discursive redundancy that is denied for reality, and this occurs in ‘real time’.

To reiterate; for every basic argument, its conclusions are supported upon non-admitted contradictions that reveal its lack when considered against other discursive bases; to uphold its truth, it must retain an ability for plausible denial in its argumentative structure by speaking of and to possible referents of and to other discourses while never confronting the base of truth the other discourses rely upon: it must ‘disguise’ its equivocations that cover for the vacillating or oscillating discourse through posturing, or for another term, identity. In general, the science of physics and mathematics eventually comes to admit a type of universal structure that contains the possibility of ‘non-locality’ (an extrapolated meaning of the Heisenberg Principle), along with mathematical ‘complexity’ and ‘chaos’, where the non-local event resides in the position of observation; a contradictory situation, but also a noticeably ‘conscious’ indication. The scientific observation of non-locality in chaotic complexity excludes the observer as an included variable but instead develops parameters that include the description of the observer as ‘an excluded observer’, and by extended discursive moves, negates the act of observation through including multiple occurrences of different observers’ observations, which again, through yet more discursive maneuvers neatly avoid that the arena by which the observations have been or are being performed has already been established as the reality that they are testing, the results of which already determined by the parameters of real meaning; a particular orientation upon objects is assumed. Reality is seen as variable in contrast to the controlled experiment which yields the constant elements of reality, but reality is static in as much as it yields consistent results when a consistent method is applied. In other words, the procession of physical discourse, in its transcribing mathematical data to meaningful terms, must use terms that are a ‘best analogy’ and left uninvestigated in order to make the statements of its findings. What is truly static and variable is ignored for the definition that corresponds with a particular and proper orientation upon objects. In effect, science does its best to assure that the choice that is made upon a decision to experiment or observe, is mitigated by the ‘natural’ demands of physical element to be tested; the phenomena ‘lends itself’ to the formulation of experiment and the matter of its communication is likewise left to a presumption of the real universe where what is spoken about the findings of physics is necessarily consistent with the terms of the experiment. Take for example the Higgs Boson; this particle is supposed to have something to do with the manifesting or ‘ability to be’ of matter. What this Higgs-type Boson has to do with the scientists who are made of matter experimenting, finding this boson, and concluding things about it, I am not sure. It seems plain to me though that the boson is nothing more that a way to justify the individual human scientists in reality. What this boson has to do with me is I find an occasion to write in a particular way. To stick to some absolute category, such as physical science, as if they are really finding an actual basic particle of the True universe, avoids the reality that is already manifested so as to bring about that course of events, including me writing about the ridiculousness of the importance of the boson, for the sake of the individual free agent of reality.

Extended at root, the situation of human choice represents an effective conceptual gap from the physical base, a gap that occurs where the universe is segregated into static or controlled elements and ‘in motion’ or variable elements. Since the physical-mathematical world is taken as base, yet it is choice that has allowed such a base to become known, the knowing individual comes to miss its own resonant motion in the vacillation, for the sake of defining what is moving. One could say Einstein was a philosopher. Likewise and further, spiritual type findings of ‘acceptance’, as well for meditation, communion and proper action, deriving from choice as base, and seeking to find guidance or correspondence from some ‘higher’ source, may use the ideas of theoretical physics to support its spiritual affection claim, such as ‘chaos’, ‘complexity’, ‘fractal’, aspects of subatomic theory, to name a few from contemporary science, but the scientific and physical discourse of the manifestation of physical things indicates no effective ‘source’ that an individual may have audience with beyond an inference made by the spiritual participant. The individual is caught in a vacillation that he does not recognize due to the insistence of his own true conceptual-discursive base.

Though this may be a somewhat ‘dry’ interpretation or designation, while these two categorical arenas may seem to overlap and conspire with each other to define a sort of ‘holistic’ picture at certain junctures, the meaning of each discourse indicates a universe that cannot admit a transcending consciousness as well as a consciousness that cannot fully account for a (scientific) physical universe due to the insubstantial situation of those things, even while each might defer to the other to round out each respective lack. Together, the implicated unity of such universe relies upon discursive situational gaps that are avoided in the act of deference, or emphasized in the act of debate, to the ‘One’ truth. Here we find the definitional parameters of reality; the various discourses of truth have veracity only in as much as the truth they suppose to be the goal or purpose of their efforts contributes with other discourses of the One Truth, but this One Truth is always suspended in the very proposal that seeks it.

Yet, ironically, one argument is typically and routinely unheard, one that arises in the conflation of basic discourses, in the gap, so to speak. Our understanding of the universe has no necessary correspondence with what is true of the universe or ourselves beyond what is understood through faith. The effect, the ‘presence’ of the conscious human being thinking, acting, and behaving in the world, is consistently reduced in the prior decision of investigation that seeks the true One; faith is anachronized in a history of and displaced to religion and spirituality of the One True Thing. This is to say, the idea of reality is a mythology, as well an ideology of power that prescribes beforehand every investigation as to its object and purpose, as well as placement and function. Further, and in type contrast, in so much that the human being is merely another thing of the universe, all human activity must be correspondent with the universe functioning; that which evidences this without seeking a scapegoat of random occurrence must admit then that the mythology is the human-thing of the universe behaving universally. Yet, its behavior cannot admit anything ‘of the True universe’ since the universe’s operation is not evident ‘to’ the meaning that humans develop, but only ‘in’ the meaning. The meaning that would have humans gain a true understanding of the universe and its operations or even purpose, is an ‘overdetermined’ meaning, a meaning that derives from a presumption of the One, of transcendence and or immanence of divinity that ‘evens out’ the vacillations of existence for the sake of itself. This then outlines what is meant by the question “how do I know this”, and, “how do I segregate myself from the universe sufficiently to know of the truth of the universe”. To reiterate; human consciousness cannot be anything but a universal operation, which is to say, human consciousness ‘makes sense’, it ‘forms meaning’ and ‘means forms’, but that such meaning has no more meaning beyond its establishing than, say, a leaf might be able to know of a true photon of light. The relation of meaning meaning is one of pure effect unto itself. The issue then is not so much about what may or may not be determined or chosen, about the uncovering or discovering the truth of an object, but about how one is oriented upon the True Objects of reality.

Hence, not only have I outlined the problem of what is possible and thereby indicated what is impossible, and as well represented what is most offensive to faith in reality, but most significantly, I have presented a situation, the meaning of this essay, that is not only impossible, but more so, ironic. For if the meaning of this essay is true, then its meaning cannot be true. Indeed, it is, again, not real, absurd. For what has occurred in order for the meaning of this essay to be conveyed, is no discursive segregated overdetermination. The essay speaks of reality, for for a one that may not be included by it. It speaks of history for the future; in other words: nonsense.

It is for this reason that metaphysical speculation will always remain the procurer and law of reality, and irony remain excluded as a viable discourse of truth.

So, if I may accentuate my point with a quote from the bodacious author David Mitchell, from his abominable book “Cloud Atlas”, 2004, pg 401:

“Maybe the answer is not a function of metaphysics but one, simply, of power.”

More impossibility in part 5? Hold onto your diapers!

Post-post-modern-modernism: The Mistake of Irony; Or, The Ironic Mistake.

Perhaps a little bitty on postmodernism and the, what could be labeled of our current situation, post-post-modern-modernism.

Here are a couple links that roughly define the conventional problem I will address in this essay. The first is a little less ridiculous than than the second. The first offers us an argument for why postmodernism is not dead, but is rather the condition upon which people find a new agency. David Foster Wallace is talking from so far down the conventional hole – at least, that he was at some point- his polemic reveals how deep his confusion is or was, as the case may be ( no disrespect intended).

http://partialobjects.com/2011/08/what-comes-after-postmodernism/

David Foster Wallace on Irony from philosophy

This is not to say that there was not this postmodern thing-era that these authors are talking about; it is also very interesting, and possibly ironic, that postmodernism has been seen as first represented in architecture (so says the first link). Nevertheless, the era was the conventional reaction to a large misunderstanding that continues.

It is not difficult to find a link between Constructive Undoing and postmodernism, especially with the irony/convention duality that has arisen here. So, in light of this parallel, and that irony is too often defined to postmodernism through deconstruction, sarcasm, posed apathy, withdrawal, multivocality and the like, as well that irony does not stem from any sort of reaction (though pm may) as it merely takes the proposed new as old hat, as already given before it became new, one has to hit it straight on, as a tangent, one might say. As the post of the link says, with “arms folded tight” one continues to lift; irony works, despite the conventional reaction.

We should look into this reaction. To do this, we will use the framework of the definition of irony, taken from Dictionary.com ( as of spetember, 2013) since the typical conventional misunderstanding involved with the coupling of irony and postmodernism is at play; the reaction allows postmodernism to be placed outside of its ironic bearings.

[Note: This essay is a shortened version.]

Irony:

1.)the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning: the irony of her reply, “How nice!” when I said I had to work all weekend.

Literature.
A.) a technique of indicating, as through character or plot development, an intention or attitude opposite to that which is actually or ostensibly stated.
(especially in contemporary writing)

B.) a manner of organizing a work so as to give full expression to contradictory or complementary impulses, attitudes, etc., especially as a means of indicating detachment from a subject, theme, or emotion.

3.)Socratic irony. (which is defined as feigned ignorance.)

4.) dramatic irony.

5.) an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected.

6.) the incongruity of this.

7.) an objectively sardonic style of speech or writing.

8.) an objectively or humorously sardonic utterance, disposition, quality, etc.

Generally, all the definitions reiterate the fifth definition; basically, the opposite of what is expected expressed in the various arenas. (A) and (B) are literary devices of turning plot or meaning. (3) is an idiomatic expression of the complete misunderstanding of Socrates, a one-sided view. (4) is little more than (3); (5) restates all the definitions. (6),(7) and (8) are the key definitions, the ones that have been elicited from the most offense of irony, in the postmodern sense.

The really interesting thing about irony is the absolute comedy of its seriousness; in all seriousness, this is the most offensive aspect of irony, and is the reason postmodernism has become a kind of stigma in philosophy, a kind of joke for modern thought so much that it had to ‘die’. Where do I laugh? Where do I nod? How can I tell if what is being said is really meant for what it says? The irony never ends, and everyone wants ends. Most every one wants to be told the punch line – but not overtly; everyone wants to be in on the joke. But the joke and the deep meaning are one in the same; if you have to guess or wonder, then you get embarrassed: you are offended.

Though I can’t be sure about the intent of definition number 6, I assume it refers to definition number 5. In fact, unless it is a type-o, the definition is probably intended to mean irony as the incongruity of what is expected and what actually occurs, in distinction to def. 5 where irony is the “outcome”. If I say I am a liar, and then I lie, the irony could be not very ironic or be very ironic depending on what has been signaled, but the incongruity of this is that one would have to guess, that is, unless the liar while telling the truth were indeed poetic as he lay, for then he would indeed be lying. But what if he were telling the truth?? As it is, the definition number 6, as a definition for irony, is quite ironic, because none of the other definitions reference the other definitions, but we are expected to see that number 6 does. It is a simple pleasure then to think that the authors of this definition included just this presentation (of 6) as a particular definition of irony because probably the best definition of irony is the incongruity of this, as it is not only a definition, but also an example. And just as such a simple pleasure could be a proclivity of some people, this paragraph itself will find many quite fed up and see no humor or pleasure in this exposition; they find it corny or even lacking in a certain finesse or refinement, or perhaps they find it too subtle. Yet it is just this kind of insensitivity or intolerance that seeks ends, that, if not indicated to the punch, will develop a position highly distanced from it, the ironic move so lowly and indistinctive as it is patronized.

Such a humor is of the most inside that one can fathom, so it is no wonder that most cannot help but develop a resentment concerning its irony. To them, they are being made the butt of a joke; like some sort of transcendent wit they miss, they maintain their seriousness as they pull the heavenly act down to their mundane decisions and proclaim and accuse and dismiss. It is not a wonder postmodernism has a bad rap; the dense can hardly hold a tune, let alone wish to appreciate the finest symphony in the world without the liner notes. Grinding their teeth together they talk lightheartedly and then seriously about this and that fashion, all the while truly being the object of ridicule that was never intended for them except that they made it such. “We are not laughing at them, we are just laughing,” and they have much more serious things by which to set their recreation.

(7) and (8). The definition of ‘sardonic’: characterized by bitter or scornful derision; mocking; cynical; sneering: a sardonic grin. In other words, the distasteful, ‘dark side’ of irony: “objectively sardonic”. The attitude behind this irony is an anxious individual, almost despairing of the world. The irony is a type of ‘sick’ humor; his denial is palatable. This one has come close to his theoretical, indeed actual, demise and spits out his fate upon everyone and the world (the objects) because it is the world. Ironically, the world has let him to know, and he doesn’t like it; he doesn’t like being dominated but he has found his distance from it in one of two ways: a) The world is shitty. The world of history is not the place of his childhood dreams; it has brought everything opposite childish happiness had more than hoped for. He wants to be free, but his conscience tells him its all a sham, and this is known to him due to the world’s history coming upon him. The oppressive world. b) His attitude is justified in righteousness. The offense of the shitty world is countered by the nobility of human presence: the world is great, it is working in his behalf. This nobility is held in countenance for the world, but soon the world rejects it, it counters every move. A suitable image must be maintained; the oppressive individual. In both, the object is prominent; in (a), it is the object proper to convention, in (b), the individual, the subject-object, the subject of convention. Whether it is in reference to some ‘childhood dream’ or the ‘grown-up’ approach to reality before him or her, the motion is that the nobility rejects the rejection and the world crumbles; it deconstructs because the individual is no longer complicit with the world, but again, offended by it. The individual perpetually lives in a fear of his own making, cast upon the world that is surely going bad from the activities of himself – if only he could just leave, or, can he save it in time!

The reaction here is ironic; the ironic-sardonic postmodernist and the individual that sets postmodernism to a proper era are both implicitly involved in the conventional reaction. Consciousness, by its very nature, is a retreat from the world; perhaps more precisely, the world is consciousness’s retreat from existence. The individual who is being ironic by realizing that the world of the great (at least, modernist in the last, but conventional in its beginning) human history has brought itself to destruction, is reacting not to the world, but to her inability to reconcile it to her knowledge; her knowledge does not ‘reach’ the object. The reaction is completely of alienation, which is to say, the individual is not alienated due to some historical social motion where she is offended at the state of the world and so withdraws from it, but rather the individual is alienated from herself due to her rather un-ironic belief (faith) in the oppressing thing of the world, that is, that there is this world, which is reality, the conventional world of the true object. This is not so much that the world brought itself to its own destruction, but that the world did not destruct, and this is to say that the world did not find solution, but that the world is insolvent. The result of the world finding a new way due to the old way not working, or bringing itself upon destruction, is not finding a solution in this new way, the result is that the new way is exactly the same as the old way, that the two ‘ways’ could not but have caused and resulted from each other necessarily, that the causes will be found conventionally. The reaction is thus not of the world but of the meaning that the individual has derived from it, which contradicts that the human was ever part of the world in the first place. Then the reaction becomes dismissive, yielding the ‘that’s just life’ tail. Asserting the priority of beliefs and their function for finding ‘the good’, the reaction wields the power of resentment in hopes of stifling and ending all dissension.

The belief itself, the act or motion the term ‘belief’ signifies of faith, is what creates or allows for the alienated individual; the condition of the human being in reality is the separated individual. This separation, basic to the individual, is what constitutes freedom, the great future of progress, as well as its complimentary spiritual form of union (yoga) and ‘return’ (Christ, messiah, or ‘anointed one’; the motion as ‘to anoint’ connotes a uniting of separate substances, yet where one significant or uncommon element is rubbed on a regular or common element, and in this moment the two are transformed; the blessed oil becomes merely oil, the common, significant. The misused idea of ‘karma’, so prevalent in the West, falls in here also.) Nevertheless, it is recognition or realization, a coming into knowledge, that develops ‘alienation’ as a lived experience. But the inherent and unavoidable condition of human consciousness is separation.

Anxiety and despair over such a realization is usually understood to be relieved by two moves, though there are really three; the first two are conventional. The first is denial, where the realization is avoided. This reaction replaces the old with the new as part and parcel of willed, reasoned progress. The initial problem here is replaced with the solution that is human agency, the negotiation of parties, be it spiritual negotiation or mundane. The second is insanity. Both of these reactions are complicit in the resolution to the problem, since there is no true overcoming of the discrepancy; faith in reality accomplishes this feat through denial; hence, denial and insanity are the only real options. I emphasize real options, in the sense that I have already been developing conventional faith; anything else is absurd, insane. Thus the third option is the non-conventional, the ‘not-real’ option (Francois Laruelle might call this the Real option); the reconciliation that can come only does so with existence, through the experience of irony: denial and acceptance become not mutually exclusive.

The human being in existence cannot but help behaving in the only way it can: ultimately determined in every activity. But this activity, this existence, is also human consciousness; it can only behave the way it does. This is to say on one hand that consciousness does not behave or operate in any way separate from the behavior of existence, but also on the other that its operation is to have a world that is sufficiently separate from itself by which it can then perform its functions, and these are exactly formed and allowed for through the partition we call free will, that is, choice. Human consciousness must have a true object, it cannot function without it, but in order for there to be a true object there must be a correspondant of at least equal stature, and this is the individual thoughtful human being. The evident aspect of consciousness is thought, and is itself a mode or motion of the existing universe. Thought thereby retains an effectively universal operational structure as part of its nature, which is to say, the processes and features of knowing resonate the very motion of the universe as course, which is unity. Yet unity, unfortunately for the individual, can only exist by separation; only in the condition of separation can a notion of unity have meaning. Separation and unity have a significance for the meaning making existent human being; the tension or motion thereof, which is vacillation, is not allowed in the progressive reality: reality relies upon the equanimity of subject and object as real things, absolutely true objects, and its privileging of either dependent upon the circumstance at hand as the circumstance is foundational in indicating progress.

Stepping back from this, we can say nevertheless, once the equilibrium, or symmetry, of the statures of true object and thinking subject are upset, existence effectively takes over its proper imperative, that is, the sanctity of the true object begins to fail for knowledge, and knowledge likewise is compromised of its ability to ‘hold off’ the encroachment of the operation of thought upon itself: consciousness then must uphold its existential operation, as its foundation is the differend between thought and object, and the reduction of the knowledge of the object to the object of knowledge eventually brings thought into a consideration of itself, as an object of itself. Only in the balance that holds the (inner) subject and (outer) object at sufficient distance in consciousness can one say that the objective dominates; psychology is the conventional method that attempts to keep the distance of thought and object, to maintain the balance. Once this symmetry is lost, however, the motion never falls toward the object, the motion is always toward the knowing subject, falling in upon the subject of knowledge until consciousness almost comes upon itself and faith is reestablished; this can be called, what is typically known as a ‘psychological breakthrough’ or a ‘spiritual experience’. Where it indeed truly comes upon itself, we call this insanity or death. Where the individual is incapable of functioning constructively in the group of humanity, conventional reality is upheld by the group through a faith that functions to keep the balance and maintain the symmetry of the subject and object in knowledge, as an objective aspect, and thought, as a subjective aspect, which is to say, in knowledge that such an individual is insane defined as a true object for the purpose of establishing the standard for the individual: the subject (subject-object), and in thought for the purpose of establishing the objective standard of reality: the object.

The usual reading of postmodern exposition is contained thus far; not for a reiteration of it, but to a step from it. Though more than a few authors either contributed to the development of postmodernism, or step from it, to offer their version, I address two authors here: Jean-Paul Sartre and Francois Laruelle. Through a particularly conventional lens, each offers a stating of the point of contention, a reiteration, as well as a reconciliation of the ironic problem, while saying, really, ironically, the same thing. The punch line: the discrepancy (the individual is established in separation) is solved through an assertion of essential freedom. Again, this is to say that both proposals arise through a denial of existence and an assertion of the true object. This, in effect, is the definition of what Sarte terms “bad faith”, as I have argued of Laruelle in the Direct Tangents of Constructive Undoing.

Sartre’s points are foundational. The reduction of thought to an object of itself opens meaning to an ‘abyss’ of freedom, where meaning comes to its own essential lack. To (here now) reiterate the foregoing, the essence of meaning (if we can say there is such a thing) is seen to be vacant, void, nil, as Slavoj Zizek has said of the subject. This knowledge of contradiction, meaning that is no meaning, causes the individual angst, or Kierkegaardian ‘despair’; in my terms, the individual understands that the reality through which he or she was moving, that has been established and motivated through basic, what was before thought, true tenants of reality, true objects, is found to be not true. Sartre’s move then is to ‘revolt’ from this ‘nothingness’, since the individual supposedly sees now that meaning is arbitrary, and thereby find true freedom because the individual sees that he is no longer constrained by any essential, determined, or otherwise actual truth of any matter whatsoever.

Laruelle, if we are able to set aside the conventional-temporal object for one moment, where Laruelle builds his non-philosophy due to Sartre’s and others’ ideas before him, we may find his address through what I shall use as his basic idea. While all of his terms interact and compound upon one another to indicate the same thing, which is the point of contention, his ‘unilateral duality’ works to indicate the last conventional object. The ‘future Christ’ he terms as a culmination or basic differential which allows or accounts for the total meaning of, what I call, the scheme of meaning that is conventional reality, the meaningful organization of true objects. By summoning total meanings of significant oppositional objects, his critique of philosophy proper reduces its operational terms to explain conventional reality; he limits conventional reality to the arena of ‘philosophy’ for strategic reasons, and calls the consequence or result of this reduction the ‘Real’. Using the idea of future Christ, his reconciliation poses some sort of radical agency – mind you, ‘agency’ has been likewise re-situated in non-agency – that, one is to gather, comes about through a proper understanding of reality. The reason he can appear, as we say, ‘in the last’, is the real and the Real remain for him ‘lateral’ or maybe better, parallel but are situated more properly upon a parallax. The freedom of Sartre is similarly re-situated with the ‘radical’ form of knowing and proposes some more evolved state of humanity.

Again, keep in mind that I am presenting a typically conventional reading of these authors, that the fact of their presentations are routinely and faithfully, in Laruelle’s terms, ‘made into another philosophical object’, a representation of the point of contention. The problem is at all times conventionally upheld for reality, Real or free. The problem is not the presentation that these authors enact, but the re-presentation: the overcoming of the true object is impossible for conventional reality.

Hence, perhaps a better rendition of the matter at hand can be better situated to address the impossible. To put it directly into conventional grasp, we might then see that to confront the impossible is a matter of insanity.

Yet before we venture into the impossible, I would like to offer a small quote from Thomas Nagel, and his effort from the possible, of staying in the possible:

“However, I do not find theism any more credible than materialism as a comprehensive world view. My interest is in the territory between them. I believe that these two radically opposed conceptions of ultimate intelligibility cannot exhaust the possibilities. All explanations come to an end somewhere. Both theism and materialism say that at the ultimate level, there is one form of understanding. But would an alternative secular conception be possible that acknowledged mind and all that it implies, not as the expression of divine intention but as a fundamental principle of nature along with physical law?”
~ ‘Antireductionism and the Natural Order’, in Mind and Cosmos, p.22.

One should see that Nagel’s situation is nothing larger than what Soren Kierkegaard offered 160 years ago: Is there a teleological suspension of the ethical? For the question Nagel asks here is nothing greater than conventional, though he might be trying to indicate something more (we shall see). Nagel is asking if there is a way to bring the remnants or basics of the bifurcated real meaning wherein we have idealist subjectivism and religious transcendence/immanence versus materialist objectivism, into a scheme of meaning that does not indicate upon such distinction, which is to say, does not reify the insolvency. The answer is: conventionally, no. All human reality depends upon the duality of meaningful categories; the real is the universal is the ethical. The answer ironically is: yes.

Thoughts of God, the Dialectic of Faith and the Conventional Bias.

As we move into the process of constructively undoing the presumptions of method that present to us the problem-filled world of reality we all know, for which we recourse to hope, it may be well that you need not venture into that heart of darkness all alone. Otherwise, at minimum, you should see that it is only on the precipice that the abyss seems endless; we need no longer cringe back into the bliss of faith. One may proceed as in a liturgy, but where the call and response of priest and congregants are removed from any hierarchical or proper structure, the hymnal and ‘Good Book’ consigned to discourse, the priest extraneous, its voice from the outside, an unnecessary element, and the congregants likewise lose their imperative compulsion to supplicate. Neither does the arrogance of righteousness cloud the firmament of heaven.

Considered much, and ventured far from civility, it is often difficult not to speak the truth; I am sure it is with you. Bias is only mitigated through faith, so we have first to deal with situating the conventional bias.

The truth exists through the dialectic, as one is thereby placed within it. So, we should situate what is meant here by the dialectic; here I tend away from Aristotle, more toward Hegel. I call into play here an idea developed by Jean-Francois Lyotard: the differend. We might see that his is an extrapolation or possibly re-presentation, a re-iteration of what Hegel presented; yet i would go so far to say that most, what is called, Continental philosophy, if not all philosophy in general, is merely a re-presentation of the point of contention.

Lyotard’s moves and layout of the necessary reprecussions of his designation are not entirely pertinent here; this is because his project exhibits problematic limitations (which I will more thoroughly address) that can be discerned by his situating the dialectic as part of a total phrasing by which he poses the differend. Breaking with his inherent boundary, a boundary that forces significance in polemical fashion ( a differend of itself), I shall call the differend that aspect of discourse that cannot be accounted for within conventional discussion, but nevertheless is involved ironically. It is not a basis of such discussion, nor a given, nor a ‘decision’ of the like of Francois Laruelle; in fact it is the converse of the philosophical decision, and not un-akin to the non-philosophical method, so to speak. A differend is that which stands ‘in the way’ of discussion; it grants the discussion from the person that reaches out to an other in order to establish a common ground. A differend is that by which a discussion about the nature of reality and existence may take place and have credence beyond the division of labor. It is also the assumption of what is common between participants where the assumption carries no weight for the discussion due to the differend allowing for faith by its absence. A differend is a means for accounting for truth; it is a way ‘I’ can account for ‘you’ as well as you, I, as well as we, the world. Thus, complicit yet skew to Lyotard’s situation, we should see that a true dialectic occurs, not between two parties in an attempt to locate or discover truth, the process based in faith (bad faith), rather, it occurs of the first party in relation with the differend of the presented discussion, such that the differend is the only ‘thing’ that remains constant through the real scheme of negotiated truths, that which brings the discussion of two parties indeed to a common ground. In this way or effect, the differend is what likewise presents, in relief, what I have termed the conventional methodology for truth, that which supplies the ‘true object’.

“Be not discouraged” is operative. In the dialectic, we come to terms with this, for an object is an obstacle that brings in its relief the irreconcilable damages that then require the reasonable doubt for which faith is demanded, the judgement of the court.

The philosopher Bertrand Russell has given us a pretty good rendition of the issue of the ‘true object’, but I shall attempt my own. I present an object, and ask, “what is it; that thing there in front of us? How shall I define it?” Maybe I begin by describing its functions, then its characteristics. Have I succeeded in granting what, say, a chair is? The person next to me says, well, you have given me qualities of that thing there, but im not sure you have conveyed what a chair is; I know what it is, but i wish to communicate what it is. So then maybe I go to a dictionary, maybe an encyclopedia. Still, the person is not convinced. We are looking at a chair, we both call it a chair, but I have not succeeded in granting to him what a chair is, beyond an incomplete description of that thing that somehow is common between us. In fact, I can continue to describe aspects of that thing and I will never get to a complete description of it. Then, besides whether or not the thing ‘the chair’ can be described enough to grant it, there are also questions that bring into question that there is really a thing that corresponds with the label ‘chair’. For example, if I say ‘a chair has four legs’, one may ask if a table qualifies as a chair, and I could say, yeah, if I sit on it then it could be a chair. But if you don’t sit on it, can it still be a chair?

This is the situation of every object. It is not a situation of subjective, personal or individual realities, but neither is there an absolute qualifier for what a ‘chair’ is beyond knowledge. This is the idea Kant expounded upon when he concluded there is no knowable object “in-itself”, that objects exist entirely within or of knowledge. His analysis goes much further in depth, situating terms and discussing the outcomes of the apparently logical ordinances that then arise, than our discussion here requires. Yet, we should see that his analysis involves a differend that implicates at least two ‘things’, an object in-itself, the chair in our example, as well as a ‘brain’ or ‘mind’ (a subject, un-problematized) that is deduced as incapable of overcoming the epistemological wall (the object problematized); this situation, then, presents a fundamental duality, a given that then allows for its own denial, a forgetting, so as to allow his presentation. Though his effort concerned establishing a ‘better’, less superstitious, metaphysics, he succeeds ironically in perpetuating the same (see my subsequent post).

The key to breaking this epistemological nightmare, though, where what surely appears to me as a true thing is actually not so true, at least, in so much as I might want to convey it to another person, is the third party. In the third party lay the responsibility of truth, there resides truth’s criterion. It is the problem of the third party that reveals one’s orientation upon the object. Orientation concerns the differend. In contrast to the dialectic as I situate it above, but projected toward what Lyotard calls “the referent”, what can be called the object, where the thing or object is taken as self-evident, as containing aspects of itself that human beings through some method can then know as true (for example, the proposed objects of conventional dialectic and discourse in general) as well, where the subject is localized by the individual for the sake of the substantiation of the individual – in other words, where there is no deferend worth mentioning – we have then the ‘true object’. Where the situation of knowledge concerning communication is mitigated or denied for the sake of having a true thing, due to the ‘displacement’ of the individual into reality, there we also have faith.

The overlay of ideas that accounts for the dialectic of faith concerns the subject as the subject no longer is distinguished through the conventional methodology as equivocal to the individual. What then emerges through this differend is a real assertion of the priority of the individual that henceforth can be called the ‘subject-object’.

Hence; what we deal with can be understood through the following possibilities:
(1) Faith: The relation between transcendent-immanent (God) and human involving a total reality of the created universe (of objects);
(2) Faith: The relation between (1) and the subject-object, which is to say, the individual of conventional reality;
(3) The effective differend of (1) and (2).

* *

With the foregoing in mind, I begin with a quote from an ongoing discussion of comments for the previous post “Issues and Existence”:

– “For example: I discover I have terminal cancer. I have heard that God loves me, and I have heard that God is all-powerful. Given these “truths,” I can’t imagine why God would not cure me of cancer, so I ask him to cure me.
Why does a request like this not get answered with a cure 100 percent of the time?

If I understand The Bible’s rendition of our story, this world is no longer the world that God created or intended. God has a plan to restore creation, but His Death-to-Life Project moves directly through death.

So, I think a short answer to the question is that God is leading humanity on a difficult — but hopeful — route through a ruined world“.
.”

Since the idea of faith is so tied up with Christian ideology and cosmology, I’m gonna give a list of ideas mentioned in the excerpt that I have difficulty with:

– god intends.
– god loves
– god restores creation
– god is leading humanity through a ruined world

These above statements present most poingnoantly the problem I’m treating. The statements indicate one statement. I’m going to skip over that it relies and implicates a ‘Divine Power’ (obviously), and go to what is most significant: It exactly ‘presents’ a proposed absolutely true object, God, and beckons the human being away from the world. It confirms the problems of humanity, that a human being cannot but have problems, that is, that the ‘problems’ are universal (again, a proposed ‘true object’) and so all human beings deal with problems the same way; which is to say, they have a common mode of psyche that defines humanity as such – saying this without a speck of irony. God thus ‘intends’ better for ‘all’ humanity because humanity is taken as another common true object amoung other objects of a true universe (God at the ‘top’ as creator of true objects) with absolute definitive qualities and having ‘difficulty’ being such because it is human nature in-intself, as human nature is defined by the ability to choose out of thier (problematic) sinful condition through ‘repentance’ and belief, this idea being totally misconstrewed in the idea of free will. The correspondence between these two true objects (the ‘equal’ and common true object called the human being and the true object ‘God’ that intends and tends for that humanity) must indeed be one of faith as I have described, and bridged in Christianity by belief in Jesus, instead of relieved through knowledge of what is said of him. I would suggest reading, or re-reading Nietzsche.

I would prefer to say “God is love”. If there is a heavenly or divine aspect that human beings can be involved with, it must be love. But this has nothing to do with “why God would not cure me”, except that one is involved with an orientation upon the world that requires of him (the individual), for the sense that one can have of it, to think of oneself as partial to oneself essentially, that is, as having elements of themselves that can be separate from other parts, such as, my self, what people like to call ‘ego’ (which is a most appropriate idea here), separate from God. Only through this type of denial can ‘a God’ love, and by extension or retraction, love the individual.

We can begin to situate how conventional reality lacks in irony by considering what
Slavoj Zizek has said about love:

(You can also google ‘Slavoj Zizek on love’, if the link doesn’t work.)

In listening to Zizek, one should see that how he frames his bit is the same that frames the differend with its referent, so to speak, that the universe is contained or accounted for as a totality in this framing. Thereby, if there is a ‘good’, as one might inscribe a whole universe, ‘inclusivity maxima’, where all is ‘come over’ by a total ethics, where the impetus (non-impetus?) is toward or completed, resolved, in ‘goodness’, then it is what can be understood as a ‘beginning-and-but-end’, or perhaps, a ‘creation’, and ‘good’ is the purpose or reason in a ‘returning to’ (reckoning). Love is then the proposed motion of this return. Against the ‘beginning’, as what has begun thereby separates what has set out from its beginning, and what at one time began is now separated from, Zizek says, “love is evil”.

We are situated in a world that we supposedly all know. Some people who proclaim themselves as a sort of activist, or maybe spiritual advocate for whole-ness, of a whole world, say they love the world, while others of a more pessimistic nature might say they hate the world. But these postures reflect the very position of ‘being set out’, of having the inherent ability gained by their being ‘not whole’. By the fact of the phrase, as Lyotard might put it, such sayings present the world as separated, as ‘not good’, as ‘evil’. By the sayings or assertions of position (presented presentations: representations), those seek to overcome the discrepancy involved in the having to say ‘I love…’ or ‘I hate…(the world)’. The sayings present thus a ‘longing’ that cannot be resolved – except through faith. Thus Zizek is saying “We do not love the whole world…(rather) we pick and choose what we love” through the phrases as they indicate a referent (the true object); the condition of such referent is, though, insolvent, and is thus termed expressions of the evil that resides in the world.

If ‘creation’ means its most exstistant meaning, as opposed to its existing meaning, then there is nothing to restore; rather, every moment restores what was lost through itself. This is the dialectic, the truth found within. To bring in ‘a God’ destroys so it might redeem; when one reads many Gnostic texts, we get a glimpse of how they situated this possibility in discourse. (By the way, Laruelle attempts to reiterate this meaning without reifying the Gnostic dogma or the textual form of analysis {hermeneutics}.) In most religious-type systems, such ideas typically are found in ‘secret”; this includes Judaism. The God who creates the world or universe is seen to have revolted from an earlier ‘God’ from which the ‘creator’ came. If I recall, at least in one Gnostic text, this creator-god is seen to hold the world in a lie, and proclaims upon his creation “you will have no other Gods before me”.

From another angle, if you think about it, one must ask, why would a god who created all the heavens and the earth need to make a law, to command his creation not to have any other gods?

The ‘ruined world’ must be that human situation where such a commandment is necessary. So it is that with the presentation of the commandments we have already the ruined world. But there has been no ‘progress’. There has only been the situation of the ‘one and the others’: the one, such as Moses or Jesus, who has knowledge, and the others, who need or have faith. The ones of knowledge need no faith, they know the truth; creation is manifest; creation exists. Only for those of faith does creation need to be restored, because ruination is their own, but denied for the sake of faith. The restoration never occurs because the situation is the situation of existence, not of conventional history, not of the true past toward a fulfilled future. The movement of such history is entirely of knowledge, spoken synchronously, the subject separated from the individual projected into humanity and extended as hope in time. Thus the movement of history is the movement of humanity involved in this dialectic, the discussion founded upon the responsibility of the third party, and how this is situated for meaning; there is nothing beyond this aspect. This is to say, the movement of what is beyond is ironic; so much as history is extended in time as the discrepancy and dynamic of knowledge and faith, what is beyond is beyond distinction in this way: It is contradiction in truth and paradox in meaning. It is that which contradicts while affirming that is existence, and in this way, is offensive to conventional truth: the truth is absurd. That which contradicts and is offensive to conventional faith is that we merely are meaning-making creatures; what is absurd is that this reduction allows for meaning that arises from such meaninglessness, the truth of reality in faith: the double voice.

What we can have of the differend is the distinction between knowledge and faith, instead of the relation that is revealed of knowledge and faith that tends toward a speculative metaphysics of conventional reality. The difference is located in whether all the facts are accounted for without offense or not. What is not offensive to the conventional method, the reason why metaphysics is so alluring, is that it is involved with, indeed, making progress. Whether such progress is marked by technological, scientific, economic, emotional, mental, religious or other objective genres makes no difference because they are all motions of the conventional methodology of reality, of the individual of objects, all motions posited in faith. I submit that humanity, the conglomerate or constituency of human beings, of faith is being lead nowhere. What is ‘difficulty’ is being free and alone in a hostile world, and this then beckons a faith in hope as purpose. But likewise, what is difficult is the knowledge of what is true against the multitude of faith. The one of knowledge thus is not alone in a hostile world, but free against the hostility founded through the ones of faith. His difficulty is that he knows the truth and thereby is lead; the problem then is how to come to terms with the people of faith. The problem here then, is how the differend is situated in reality. The differend has to do with absolute presentation of the situation, not so much the phrase or its existant or substantive role in context, but rather as i have said, the issue is the term.

Issues and Existence.

I subscribe to a blog called “Bigstoryguide” where he author is involved with a running commentary as he goes through the Bible. Yes, the whole Bible. His blog he calls ‘Jesus’s death to life project’. I think he just got to the New Testament.

I am not a Christian; I am not religious nor prescribe to any particular religious doctrine. I would say if there is a god then he-it-they guide and/or ‘cooperates’, not so much with me, but, more so say, ‘upon’ or ‘through’ me. I’m not much for claiming god as my homie or leader of my gang or nothing, but neither, as what could appear contrary but complimentary to religion, would i say i practice or believe any sort of spirituality; if i am spiritual it is because i am motivated to convey (in practice and speech, as writing or talking is a practice also) what I understand and understand how i might be able to convey it. God or gods, religion and spirituality are just interesting to me, and seem to suggest many significant issues with reality, life and the world, as well as their solutions. If I say I am religious or spiritual, believe in God, gods, spirit, universal energy, etc… It is in the ‘spirit’ of colloquialism for the purpose of the attempt to communicate and/or to help. In a way, one could say, it is not so much what I say I believe, but what is true of what I say.

So this blogger posted a nice piece that I use as an occasion to comment. Here is his post, with the link after:

One night during the Spanish Inquisition in Seville, a cell door swings open and The Grand Inquisitor steps into the doorway. Pausing on the threshold, he lifts his lamp into the small dungeon to cast light on the prisoner’s face. The light yreveals what he already knows. The prisoner is Jesus.

There will be no trial. In fact, The Grand Inquisitor has already made his decision. He will burn Jesus at the stake in the morning.

The verdict: What Jesus offers human beings is not enough. Although He offers Himself as the bread of life, it simply is not enough.

Thou has promised to them the bread of life, the bread of heaven; but I ask Thee again, can that bread ever equal in the sight of the weak and the vicious, the ever ungrateful human race, their daily bread on earth?

(“The Grand Inquisitor” from The Brothers Karamozov by Feodor Dostoevsky http://www.gutenberg.org/files/8578/8578-h/8578-h.htm)

John 6. Non-fictional.

A crowd of people searched and found Jesus – excited about the way He had miraculously provided bread for them. However, Jesus didn’t want to talk with them about miraculous provisions of food.

Instead, He offered Himself to them. He offered Himself as “real food” and “real drink.” Their verdict?

“This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?”

From this time many of His disciples turned back and no longer followed Him.

http://bigstoryguide.wordpress.com/2013/06/21/bread-of-life-no-thank-you/comment-page-1/#comment-132

I don’t think the blogger intends it, but the situation he presents here in juxtaposing the fiction and the, supposedly, non-fiction, sums up what can be called our current ‘existential situation’.

Again, as I have said in previous posts, the issue is not so much about what may be true of these stories, but how to speak of it, about its significance. The religio-mythological writ coordination of meaning, such as the (assumed) intent of the Bigstoryguide blogger, is much too dogmatic for me, too much like “…and the moral of the story is…better eat yer veggies!” As if one can merely choose to believe; as if if I just explain it to you well enough, then you will of course choose the obvious better choice. My question is: Why wouldn’t you? I mean, if all you got to do is believe and everything will be ok, why would anyone choose not to believe it? I, for one, can honestly say I have not chosen anything about what I believe, except maybe that I believe I will leave for work tomorrow 20 minutes early instead of 30. So it is that we have our existential situation. (By the way, in case you didn’t know, Dostoevsky is considered an existentialist writer, though he wrote before the term was coined.)

{ Side: Somewhat recently I saw a book, a humor book, that was called something to the effect like, ‘The Idiots Guide to Choosing a Religion’. It was great; truly funny. Similar tongue-and-cheek to a book from the 1980’s called, again, I think, “The Book of Money”, or maybe “The Money Bible”, From what I remember of it (the latter book), someone wrote this book using ‘biblical-speak’, with titled books that mimicked the actual books of the Bible, numbered chapters and versus; stories similar to the Bible stories’ content, but its was all about money. I wish I would have gotten it when I saw it. It was classic. The best chapter, which was in the book with the name and style that mimicked the book of Psalms, and was called “Money”, went something like this:

1. Money money money; oh money. Money money money money money money thou money. 2. Money money, money money. My money money money: money money money money. 3. Money. Money money money ….

Well, you get the jist. Absolutely hilarious. And the really great thing about it, the thing that struck me about it, was I wasn’t totally sure that it was meant to be a joke. As I said; Classic.

The ‘Religion’ book, though, is like a reference book, and it has every religion, sect, and cult that you can think of from the ages till now, all listed as to their qualities. Fundamental beliefs; type of pantheon, from one God, to paganism, to polytheism, to natural philosophy; benefits, such as, having an afterlife, or being forgiven, to you get to have you own universe, and ‘thumbs-down’, like, believes there is a hell, or must be willing to kill yourself, or have to wear certain clothes; practices; etcetera. Each religion and/or spiritual belief system has its own listing and even is rated, like, in a five star scale, against others. At least, again, this was my impression of it; the actual details may be slightly different. And again; I’m not totally sure that it is a joke, but I’m pretty sure it was written in good fun.

The reason I mention it is because it comes out of the idea that people can choose what they believe, like we can actually go shopping for a religion that best fits our beliefs, as if i can find one that meets most of my criteria and the rest ill just choose to believe; or, I can even choose what I want of believe because I’m not totally sure what I believe, or what it means. Well, I’m sure we can do this, but what does that really say of what we believe ? }

The issue I am going to deal with now is posed in the excerpt. Particularly how John puts it, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?”

Again, if I wasn’t clear, I am not advocating Christianity, or that one needs to ‘accept’ Jesus as their personal savior. But likewise, I am not taking a dig at Christian blogger dude; he likewise could no more choose not to be a Christian (I only assume he is a Christian), than he could choose to be, say, an alligator, though it is just as well that most everyone believes that there is a choice to be had. I suppose the significant idea is found in asking someone to believe she can choose to believe that she has no choice. Or even better, asking someone to not believe in what they believe. That person might then respond by saying that their belief (that is in question) has developed through a consideration of circumstances, upon choices made, and that they cannot choose to not believe what they believe because their belief is sound, and they would not want to change their belief. So then I would have to say that they have no choice in what they believe. The rebuttal then would affirm that for their present belief they have no choice because the choices made in the past have brought them to their current condition of belief, which is to say that our present situation is determined by our past choices, which is thus sound (or not sound, as the case may be with having an issue (read on; see below) but the point then for the response is that the belief that they have an issue, is sound) Well, I say, what prevented the past situations of belief from being chosen out of; at what point in time did you have a choice upon what you believe? And back: And why would I want to believe that I had or have no choice? And me again: in what way has your wants determined what you choose? So can you choose to not want what you want? The argument could go on and on, through many avenues and considerations, quite like Plato’s dialogues, but the pivotal response would inevitably arrive: Why would I want to choose out of that which has soundly brought me to my place of truth? And, why would I want to choose not to want what I want anyways?

This is the issue, isn’t it. Issues.

Here is another way of looking at it.

The question I have pondered for a long time is: why wouldn’t I choose the ‘easy’ way; I mean, why wouldn’t I choose what is healthy for me, or ‘better’ for me? Why would I choose to make things difficult on myself? Am i not intelligent and sane? Now, I don’t mean this in the sense like studying and going to school to be an engineer might be difficult. Rather, I mean why would I choose to party real hard, too hard maybe, so I am incapable of studying well enough so I could get the career of my dreams? Well, the typical thinking goes to psychology: I am just fuckt up like that, like, something is wrong with me, like I have some issues embedded in my psyche or my mind that makes or compels me to make decisions that are not to my benefit despite myself.

I propose for this situation that the individual in question could not choose because she had no choice, and Christianity, the institution, and all Religion and spirituality in general, as well as psychology, the ‘science of mind/ behavior’, so to speak, develops not only in response but out of this apparent inability. I submit that the individual was doing all she could to do what was in her best interest, that in fact, she was doing what was in her best interest the whole time ( ill address the ‘best interest’ part later). Most if not many would say, that is because she does have issues. Ok; say I believe that I have issues. I reflect upon those times, or I resent those times because I come across thoughts that I had, or now have in me that were telling me that I should make the other choice, the one that at the time I knew was the right choice but did not make. I have an issue, and then I have an issue because of the issue, so I decide to get get help with my issues. I goto therapy. Over time I come to terms with my issues and get better – or maybe I don’t.

Never mind that many would argue that one does not ‘believe’ he has issues, he merely has issues; well, who is talking about what one believes? What issues are there if one does not believe that there are issues? The issues everyone else sees, or believes they see? The issue one has in-itself, or the issue that one believes everyone else does not have? But here, this is not a matter of believing, it is a matter of what is true.

The significant question has got to be: Why could I not just choose to leave my issues behind when I realized that I had them? Why would I sit in them when I know they have caused and are causing me all sorts of problems? The answer has got to be concerning belief, and not so much of what is reality and what I chose as a subject of reality; it can not be so much about what may be true of reality as much as one is involved with it. Perhaps it can be said, it does have more to do with what I am not choosing, but not so much as my issues have not been chosen in so much as they were thrown upon me: it is because my issues are informing me exactly as to who I am, and I cannot dismiss myself from my identity, nor do i want to. And, if i want to, I cannot. Hence the problem.

So I have to ask, against what am I having the cognition that I have issues? Exactly against the idea that allows me to know that I have issues. It is not some issue in-itself, as if there is some natural, ‘non-issue’ way, and due to this, I have some issue that is making me screwed up in my choices. Perhaps a person looks out into the world and sees that his life is not a picture that he enjoys, or perhaps he just feels wrong in his own skin. Again, the question must be, how could he be any different? Against or within this question lay the pertinent answer: in the past as different choices, or the future as a result of making different choices. Indeed; if such answers ( and so the question) were not salient, would there be an issue? And what is the past and future? Only an idea against which can have ideas about how one might have issues or not. ‘Now’ is not viable; in fact people will argue against my having an issue even while they will admit it. Likewise, those pictures and feelings one has of oneself and ones life can only exist in that they take form as ‘something that I am not’. I’m sure many are thinking that this is a most ridiculous notion, merely a conceptual game – but again, a ‘game’ as opposed to what? To what is Real? I say that it is just this game that we are all playing. In truth, such issues are entirely of one’s self, not put upon him by some separate force, but exactly the force that is that person entirely and absolutely, which has no true basis as a construction of outside forces. To bring in and reiterate what I have said before; in so much as I am an individual that has real issues thrust upon me, so much do I have faith, as well, am a subject of faith, and thereby do I look to solve my issues through faith, but ironically that faith that expresses my inability to choose to exit from them.

The thing is, so much as i may have issues, when I am able to fully concede to my issue, and thus fully accept it as me, it goes away. In as much as I deny or ignore it, it remains, and if I accept it, but not that it is me, likewise it remains. This is the presumed mode or operation of modern ‘psychoanalytic’ and/or ‘encounter’ therapy; when someone realizes whatever it is that has prevented them from ‘real-izing’ the issue (which is, really, a break from their usually reality), it is a ‘breakthrough’, like they have ‘broken through’ the facade of ‘their’ reality. And also, in this very same way, this is the presumed mode of the Christian problem, expressed in the above excerpts, that is solved through ‘belief’. In truth, this is to say of either solution, which actually is the same solution, either the issue still remains, but is accepted of oneself, or the issue is gone and so needs no acceptance; either way, the effect of the issue having power over or in ones life, is proposed as belief of the problem ‘no longer an issue’.

This is so much to outline the situation of human existence.

The main problem that the excerpts shed light upon is that for most people, such a ‘breakthrough’ never occurs. (At some point I will address this issue). So far as Christ might relate to the human condition, people are unable to sufficiently understand, or believe, so to bring about a dismissal or relieving of the issue. Beyond the dogmatics of Christian religion, Christ is the figure or actual-symbol of the message that a person merely needs to fully accept, understand or otherwise come to terms with her or his situation as an existing being. In fact, one cannot merely ‘believe’, as if a choice can be made; one must actually ‘give up’ the ideal relation that establishes oneself in, as I have spoken about it, reality. Yet, within the belief of Christianity, the functioning thereof, Jesus is that element of oneself – a precipitate of sorts, of oneself ‘un-revealed’, so to speak, unto his inability – that holds the person back from making the breakthrough, which is to say, ironically, Jesus ‘fills’ in that place, aspect or otherwise resisting area of the individual that prevents one from ‘accepting the teaching’. Jesus is the bread, is the link between the ‘not being able’ and the sought after ‘wanting for’. His presence in position of interlocutor for the discrepancy is that part of oneself that is denied for the sake of having belief being effective as a belief of choice; in other words, the Christianized Jesus is choice objectified, is that boundary, that chasm, by which one may find oneself in the substantive echo, the ‘issue’ of not being able to believe well enough, such that one may then choose to believe what suits her the belief that belief is significant. Such it is that only with the presentation of Jesus do we have the situation of a “hard teaching” that no one can accept, except that one may then, for Christianity, choose to believe.

For Psychology, as it is for Christianity, one need only choose to believe. If I can choose to believe that a ‘discussion’ about the terms of my issues will allow my issue to go away, then similarly I can choose to believe in Christ, since I need only to address my issues behind not believing. But one need not choose; choosing is the problem. So it is that the problem of the apparent inability is taken as indicating course, and a method for discerning exactly where the inability resides within a psyche or mind or soul of a now real individual (one who cannot but have the inability) is drawn out through a method of finding truth; the truth is thus the way as well as the life; it is the only way to find truth, as it concerns the human life, the only life that can be for all humanity in reality. The method becomes the true method to find truth (of oneself). No more then must we choose because our inability to choose ‘the better’, the ‘not having an issue’, is found in the choice that is the method: we need not and can not choose our way out of the situation of reality that is the issue, we instead goto therapy and believe. The therapist works to draw out the issue, as a leech for the disease of the blood, by listening to the individual speak and directing the individual to possibilities within what the individual has said, possibilities that have arisen as the science of psyche has developed out of and due to the analysis of the inability to step out of the issue. At some point, hopefully, the individual ‘speaks the issue’ so to speak, and or comes upon the issue in relation to a meaning of what was being said about it, around it, or because of it. The issue thus ‘breaks through’ the ‘wall’ of the psyche that was created by the psyche itself to protect itself in the procurement of a proper reality from the issue, but it thereby effects or establishes a reality that is ‘off’. Thus the issue is responsible for reality, as reality is the issue. Like the tract responsible for ambergris, the psyche of psychology develops along with the issue such that the matter of expulsion of the issue becomes a disgustingly beautiful thing to behold, but likewise, we can be sure the functioning of the psyche will produce another issue in its procurement of reality. The truth of this method, and or the method for finding a method that works, is hardly chosen, it is taken in faith that it is true, and that its methods are real, at least. Hence the conventional bias that sublimates and or denies its basis of operation for choice and belief.

The “breakthrough” of Psychology is the “bread” of Jesus of Christianity extrapolated in time’s discourse for the incessant and persistent inability or refusal of humanity to come to terms with its own existence. It was the same in the supposed time when the Gospels were written, as it was for Dostoevsky’s time, as it continues to be for our time. Nothing has gotten better, no one has gotten closer for all the ‘progress’ we might purport. I submit, just as many believed then as now as with those doing therapy now – so it seems.

The mid-20th century notion of Existentialism, as coined by the thinker Jean-Paul Sartre, is the expression in its explaining of the condition of not being able to relinquish such an identity. The philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, whom Sartre called the first existentialist, was the first (it seems) Western, or maybe also ‘modern’ thinker to come upon the point of contention in the way I am presenting it. They tell of the motion of existence, possible ways of situating existence in reality, which is to say, discourse, and the process whereby human beings come to terms with such an understanding. The proposal can be seen as ironic; people either are in bad faith, or they find themselves in a situation of ‘bad faith’; this is the process of conventional faith on one hand, and faith in doubt on the other. With reference to John (above, and please keep in mind that I am not advocating believing any type of dogmatics), when a person finds themselves in a situation of existence, they then realize the paradox of the “hard teaching”, and they become unsettled. They come to have ‘angst’ or become ‘anxious’ because the certainty of reality is failing, and this person either falls back into discourse of the real, or they fall onward in truth. If the latter, such angst leads to ‘despair’, and despair then is the harbinger of the ‘breakthrough’. Ironically, then the person finds that what they saw or knew of reality is no longer real.

And again, and to reiterate; the problem is precisely that understanding this process does nothing to bring it about; actually, understanding this process works to prevent it from occurring; for our examples, understanding how and why therapy operates, and that Christianly speaking, that our sinful nature can be solved through Christ; both resolve in a capacity for belief. The truth of the matter at hand is ‘hard to accept’, I would say ‘offensive’, so this state of innate human offense is solved conventionally by belief; this is summation of the presentation of conventional history. Understanding the issue only functions to bring it back around so it remains, and understanding this further tends to keep it cycling. This is the same problem of reality, what I have called “conventional methodology”. The means and manner by which reality is established and maintained is due to the overwhelming predominance of human beings who cannot let go of their ‘real identity’, even when it is plagued with issues that hinder ones ability to function. The recourse to this plague, this dis-ease of what is real, is to reify that the problem can only be found in what is real, namely, methods.

This is why and how the message of Christ became the institution of Christianity that allowed for Western Psychology. One merely needs then to believe; one needs only to repent; one needs to pray; one needs to confront their issues; one merely needs to get real with oneself; the real answer is always one needs to do something differently. Thus Christianity (of the West), sewed its own predominance; Catholicism let to Protestantism, because the Catholic way was not doing the trick. Protestantism lead to modern ‘philology’, as if we just need to study more and find the true meaning; this lead to the current Western philosophy, and this brought psychology. Round the time of the rebuking of supernaturalistic metaphysics, maybe circa 1750, and into the 19th century, we see a split in method. Protestantism developed all sorts of sects; Transcendentalism arose, as well as all sorts of Spiritualism, culminating in a profound polemic of Atheism and Magic, this last most significantly of the scholarly sort that seeks the truth through study, Alistar Crowley. Though this is admittedly quite a rough description of developments, all seek to reconcile that which is most insistently discrepant: the problematic real individual person.
It also is significant that the concepts of individualism, freedom and capitalism all came about at a time when the Christian sway was evidencing a profound failure: A state founded on the idea of the free and equal individual under the law, and the law as merely a device of negotiating individuals, individuals with pronounced and apparently unsolvable issues.

Direct Tangent 6.9: A Word on Faith: An Appropriate Rendition of Francois Laruelle’s ‘Sufficient Philosophy’; The True Object, A Moment with Pierre Bourdieu and the Practice of Process.

As a close to the Direct Tangents and segue to the next, this essay is a simple and direct stating of a basic series of the matter at hand. By ‘series’ i mean to refer to the structure of argument: points that must be understood as true in order for there to be an discussion; what are called ‘premises’ usually do not have to be true, but only sufficiently understood for an argument, but then communication may not occur. I would say that it is the insufficiency of premises, and thus argument in general, upon which conventional reality is manifested. A practice of process involving a statement of series is the condition of truth; here, I cannot, that is, am incapable of coming upon a concept already proposed as if it should not be or not have been, as if i were then jealous or offended, against which i would then argue. In the process of truth, there is no exceptions. The issue is not so much about finding truth; it has to do with the situation of terms. What is the object?

We deal in two possibilities. If i am stating my position by my opinion, i can call it an argument, and I can start anywhere I please as long as I develop sufficient premises. Yet, because, here, we deal in truth, I may not approach as if I am speaking within a conversation already developed (considering my whole blog is really one essay). I must start at the beginning, not in the middle, every time. I thus do not ‘disguise’ my target through addressing what then appears to be particular arenas of discourse, though I may use such discursive objects as an occasion for what I have to propose. The tact that is taken by many writers, whether acknowledged by them or not, of opinion, is often deceptive at best, a type of withholding, and derailing for many who would otherwise be interested.

Though Francois Laruelle appears to come very close to being ‘honest’, a reader has to be somewhat informed as to the particular meaning of what terms he presents, cloaked as they are in a type of conventional-institutionalized deception (what I have designated as ‘jargon’), to be able to appreciate what he has to say; indeed, Laruelle produces his own “dictionary” of non-philosophical terms, an effort that i see as unnecessary. It is sufficient to convey his meaning, and necessary in that he could propose it in no other way for himself and be in line with his intent, but it is not necessary by virtue of the insolvency of the true object (see below). In his attempt to be transparent and approachable (I must grant this to every writer, at first), he ‘auto-excludes’ much of his potential audience, and demands of his audience a certain academic effort. In previous posts, I have addressed this by suggesting he is in bad faith by his presentation, since – is he not supposed to be speaking upon ideas that concern everyone? And if not, why not? I, on the other hand exclude all but none in that I approach through an intent to be clear to everyone as well as myself; my exclusivity is found by choice, as there is maybe barely one who would have never chosen to come upon my work. (Nevertheless, one should note: Laruelle’s manner is indeed appropriate, since he is attacking what can be seen as the ‘head of the beast’, the effectively institutional-religio-ideologicracy of conventional method called “philosophy”, the ‘bastion of the sacred method’ by which he is a self-proclaimed “heretic”. Just as Martin Luther, and just as noteworthy, Martin Luther King Junior, among many others, challenged the prevalent institution of their times by advocating and practicing what can be seen as the antithesis of the institution’s pro-motion, Laruelle confronts the similar element of our time, but in a ‘radical’ manner. Reader, please keep this in mind as I occasion Laruelle in this discussion. I am left to wonder if in his assault on the boarder gates he has become a citizen of his own pillaging and continues to build and climb an ever renewing ladder, or whether in his proposition he has thrown away the ladder.)

So, whether or not his intent is to also confront the greater reality, I see that when he says ‘philosophy’, and proceeds to address and direct his activity upon and through a supposed institution or discipline called ‘philosophy’, he is also talking about how people in general may have ‘philosophies of…’ the various aspects and circumstances of life and existence. In contrast, I suspend no presumptions; I am addressing and treating of truth, and nothing less than what it seems a life of experience has lead me to see of how myself and other regular people (including theorists) deal with life. What is ‘rigorous’ is the critical undertaking of experience, and less so, the experience of learning how I might approach an analysis of it and thus so to speak of it. I thus approach from a proposed basis of ignorance, because that is how I came upon the world, through doubt, and through a transparent process that shows frustration and contempt as well as assuredness and askance upon the issues (Constructive Undoing is a process) as most anyone earnestly interested would, attempt to shed light on the significant issues concerning reality and existence. Hence, I hope it helps with this purpose to say that Laruelle and I are parallel in our presentations, but moreso involved in a basic parallax upon the same point of contention.

To this end, a have located a (another) specific occasion. Laruelle’s “sufficient philosophy” suggests that philosophy sees itself sufficient by itself to indicate what is true in-itself, what is true of truth. Where Laruelle has coined this idea, appearing as proposing as he is addressing a specific discipline, as he may or may not be, I coin ‘conventional methodology’ to make explicit that I am indeed taking on truth and reality of the everyday sort, the ‘ordinary method’ of coming upon reality pertaining to agreement with accepted standards, and in this I submit that I step to where Laruelle avoids, as he has been invested in a (slightly) more conservative effort, a conservation of the clause – ironically, at least in appearance.

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Here is an excerpt from Pierre Bourdieu’s “The Logic of Practice” with my clarification comments in brackets, not italicized:

” One has to escape from the realism of the structure {the true object}, to which objectivism…necessarily leads when it hypostatizes {makes, sees, understands or otherwise develops as foundational} these relations {true relations of conventional methodology} by treating them as realities already constituted outside the history of the group {an object ‘in-itself’ or ‘out-there’ as opposed to the individual thinking human being} – without falling back into subjectivism, {the individual thinking human} which is quite incapable of giving an account of the necessity of the social world { in so much as reality or the world can be argued as originating from the individual human being (subjectivism), it fails to account for the apparent arbitrary agency of random events and other conscious subjects}.” [1980 Stanford University Press; English translation, 1990 Polity Press. Pg. 52]

One cannot assume a common understanding. This is why there is discussion. But a discussion must find a common ground before there is true communication. This is the initial problem. The meaning of the terms of the issue have not been sufficiently disclosed, and it seems for our discussion, here, we are up against a very large obstacle: faith.

What I mean when I use this term is also part of the problem; through Constructive Undoing I have been attempting to indicate how faith is to be situated so communication might then occur. In this post I have presented the above excerpt because it describes the situation in a pretty good and clear manner, such that I might be able to elaborate and thus promote and get at a sensible, understandable and productive communication. In short, I turn the conventional meaning of faith, as having to do with belief and choice, on its head, or rather, back upon itself and its proclamations of truth, proposing that the conventional effort itself is based in faith, yet more precisely I propose faith as the containment that allows for the individual and conventional reality due to its ‘having’ choice and belief, but that the truth needs no faith.

Here is a more fluid reading (my rendition appropriate to ‘faith’) of the excerpt above:

One has to escape from objectivism, the idea of the true object, where objects exist ‘out there’ in the world and where the human being is likewise an object among objects of a true universe, the meaning of which allows for and maintains an absolutely true scheme that relates objects and establishes conventional reality. But also, one should not respond by falling into subjectivism, or the idea that reality stems from the individual thinker, or that whatever one believes is thus true, for this idea also fails to account for much of the aspects and activity of a social world.

Please note that Bourdieu is involved with a critique of anthropology and sociology, their theories and practices of approaching and analyzing cultures. Though his presentation is quite profound, I will not go into his particular argument here, except to say that his proposal is that one needs instead to look at practice, hence his book “The Logic of Practice”. At some point in the future I will discuss in more detail the relevance of his and others’ positions and activities. For now, his is a sufficient occasion to talk about faith.

In as much as Bourdieu proposes a solution of ‘practice’, I extract from his proposal and develop ‘faith’. The situation that he describes above, that one must “escape” from, represents how faith is constituted as reality. For my occasion toward meaning and in a manner of speaking, he is suggesting that what is necessary for truth is to relinquish ones faith in objectivism and subjectivism. It is not difficult to understand what a usual or common object is; we see them and interact with them every moment of our lives: the tree, the lamp, the box, the shirt, the person. What is not so easy is to see that these objects are not solute in knowledge, meaning, though they might be presented to knowledge, and may be re-presented by knowledge, such knowledge does not contain or correspond with any true object except that what is ‘true’ is likewise qualified or quantified to a ‘true’ meaning. What this means is that knowledge reflects only knowledge; it also means that what is at issue is where or how truth finds its ground, or its fundamental basis. Knowledge cannot, does not, ‘reach’ some ‘out there’ object, nor does the various qualities of such a true object (what can be known as an object “in-itself”, or what I call an “absolute true object”) influence knowledge or yield up information of itself that knowledge then ‘apprehends’ or ‘gains’ of it. Knowledge is not ‘knowledge of…’ so to speak. Admittedly, though, this concept seems to defy common sense, but it is apparent when one attempts to convey a truth without sensory confirmation, and without faith; hence, what is ‘common’ sense.

What we are dealing with here is a necessarily advocated separation of things in the world; we are dealing with what we see actually occurring in life and ones perception of life and the world. The method of theoretical reduction of reality to some ‘more real’ idea, such as Laruelle’s “Real” or “vision-in-One” as opposed to “reality”, is merely a situating of meaning based upon a presumption of the true object, and this yields nothing but a mythological ideology, as if one mythology might be better or more advanced or progressed than another. How is it possible for there to be a something more or less real? Despite all discursive gymnastics, only through relativity can we have a Real and then a reality, only in a world where terms are able to indicate something better than or worse than, ignorant and enlightened, essential as opposed to mundane: only in a world determined through a conventional methodology. To be more more precise, the issue is not of a discerning or discovering of (true) things based upon phrasing, clause or context, but quite the converse. It is not a mis-definition that gives us the mistake of belief in the true object, it is something infinitely more subtle and insidious: it concerns ones orientation upon the term; the issue has to do with a situating of terms for a designation of the object.

Bourdieu does an absolutely amazing job at putting into words the situation of reality as it pertains to this idea, how theoretical assertions fail, how exactly terms interact meaningfully, and how these issues resolve in, what he proposes, practice. Here, though, I am not so concerned with the particular discursive meanings of practice since we all practice every day. Our ‘inner’ thoughts and ‘outer’ physical activities are the manifestation of existence; so far as I am concerned, the world of practice just “Is”. The contemplations of what I shall do to day as well as how I actually do it as well as the thoughts about all this is commonplace, well worked and though interesting, not very significant. Things get done, I have my attitudes, my opinions, others have theirs – life goes on. But it is how one is oriented upon such ability to “practice” that is significant: it reveals ‘faith’, or how one is oriented upon reality.

Where it is possible for an absolutely true object to be correspondent with, or signify itself as, a person’s thought of it, there is faith, but also conventional reality. The theoretical reduction that would remove the incidence of meaning intended here, that would rebut again to reveal how “there is no absolutely true object”, has not grasped reality, but has asserted it; indeed, in that theoretical move, conventional faith has been restated. Such a faith is not of reflection, it is of direction; conventional faith is of the naive past toward a knowing of truth revealed as such, a superstitious past toward an ‘enlightened’ future. The direction is the conflation of sense and knowledge; the sensation combined with what ‘makes sense’, knowledge, amounts to the true object; so it is also with the ‘sensation’ based upon a ‘proper’ theoretical argument. The reflection that understands that the sensation only confers meaning through knowledge, and not along side of it or conspiratorially with it, is not in play for conventional reality: a TV is a TV, a doll is a doll, a tree a tree, a car a car, cells are cells, bricks bricks, a bird a bird, a dog a dog – a theory a theory – the assemblage or ‘world’ of such true objects, I call ‘conventional reality’, or simply ‘reality’. We should be not so concerned with some fundamental, more real, reality, which is to say concerned with how to describe (the true object called) reality for what it ‘really’ looks like, for this amounts to a metaphysical proposition; rather, our discussion here has to do with what is practical, what emerges as a result of ‘practicing the process’ life.

Absolute true objects rely on and are found by the possibility in equivocation of thought to the thing out there that is sensed and a subsequent negotiation with things out there or other; such objects rely not only on knowledge but on an indication – i say “tree” and i point over there and the person next to me sees the tree or touches it or smells it and nods “yes, i agree, that is a tree” and thereby we know that thing there is a tree in truth absolutely. By the term ‘absolute’ I mean to indicate an orientation one has upon reality, but this is difficult because in our discussion of faith there is no objective referential like a tree to point to; i can only describe situations from the occasioning of objects ( such as this ‘discursive’ object called faith). Again, even as I would argue the position that there are no absolutes, that such ideas gain their meaning as relation, which is to say, in the negotiation of meaning, i am arguing not only a truth, but i am asserting an absolute nature, aspect or thing of the universe, as if the universe has given me some piece of data or information of itself to my knowledge, as if the true one universe has relinquished or revealed itself to my knowledge. The irony of this situation cannot be overdetermined.

Conventional reality that rests upon the possibility of the absolutely true object is not true, but only true in knowledge; the reality that mistakes the ‘object of knowledge’ for the ‘knowledge of the (true) object’ is of faith. Only through knowledge can we know of what may be sense; the sense that orients sensation, as from the physical senses, that would distinguish it (sensation) from thought to show how they involve separate elements of stimuli and process, also uses such ideas to develop and reinforce the incorporated individual who is manifested, a human being, as a result of these elements. The idea is that thoughts can be distinguished from raw physical senses but the sense can influence thoughts and thoughts the senses, but that in fact they are intimately intertwined. The real human being is defined in reality and in this way is real. Hence, what i say is not real of the human being is that none of these situations can be recognized without knowledge, and thus knowledge is the total situation of being human. But, as pointed out, we should not take this to mean that we should look to subjectivity for the truth, as subjectivity usually denotes belief, not so much because, as Boudieu puts it, subjectivity fails to account for and actually avoids social contingencies, but rather because the rhetorical-theorietics of subjectivity is also informed by a particular orientation toward the true object, what I call the subject-object. We are thereby concerned with, and revealed unto, not the real subject, but rather, the true subject.

I coin the phrase “faith makes true” to emphasize the difficulty of overcoming the mistake of (conventional) reality. Reality is qualified as such, as designating the arena of true things, because it is so prevalent and common: it is reality, the relations of things in reality are real. It seems frivolous and presumptuous to make a counter-distinction, as Laruelle does, and call his ‘the Real’, as if it is somehow more real than reality; it seems more consistent and logical to call a counter distinction “not real” – and this sensibility thus also re-emphasizes the difficulty of escaping the “realism of the structure”, as Bourdieu puts it above, since one inherently and apparently is bound to what is real, to reality, because the conventional methodology deems it real and true. Also, the ability to come upon ‘what has been chosen’ informs reality inso much as ‘one chooses’ of what may be come upon. In this the object, inanimate or animate, may behave and be interacted with the human being through the free act. Reality thereby confers upon the individual his situation as real in reference to what he may or may not have chosen of himself; thereby he may have illusions based in the choices he made and be brought back into reality. So it is that the conventional agent of faith is incapable and unwilling to relinquish what (to her or him) is true, because of his faith in the true object. Faith is sufficient for reality, but not for truth, and what is more real is only likewise of faith; nevertheless, the terms of reality are sufficient to convey the truth, but are not sufficient of themselves. The non-philosophical method itself is a sufficient philosophy, and can thereby pose some ‘more real’ reality (the Real), but it is insufficient to reveal the truth.

How can this be so?
What we have is a meaning of basic duality that precipitates from conventional duality, that is found through a simple doubting of everything; a precipitate that I call the conventional bias. The sufficient non-philosophy that would recourse to offer some progressed state of reality is rooted in bias. When what is needed to bring about such progression is needed, there is faith, because the hope is that what is sufficient for logic will be sufficient for the truth of progress; but alas, it is so difficult to relinquish ones faith.

Further on Faith; A Reflection.

Im gonna step a little closer to home here, just for a moment, and offer what could be considered a fictional account of life in experience. A word on faith.

“Where I am offended, I have faith.”

I have difficulty with a faith that must be worked for, as if some times I have faith and other times I do not. The fact is, if i have faith, it is because I doubt; I have faith in doubt. This may seem offensive or contradictory to some, but I cannot help but doubt. I cannot hold to some idea of hope. I cannot hold to an idea that seems to be working sometimes but other times does not; rather, I can only hold on so long. The idea of ‘working’ is very problematic to me; if faith only works dependent upon what work I do to get it, then I am doomed, because I will fail every time – because then what about the times, despite myself, i am not working for my faith? But not just that, if i am working for faith but it somehow does not seem to be working, I will take that to mean that I am doing something wrong, that I am not worthy. I thereby end up invalidating myself unto the world and validate myself in the world. I cannot but be justified and be human.

If I have faith and I am working for it, but things do not seem to be going my way and yet I still have faith that indeed I am still worthy, my faith is vindicated but I may not have been involved with what is true, but only what I have made true through my belief that working for something is noble. If I have faith but am not working for it and things seem to be not going my way but yet i still feel worthy, again i am vindicated but I may be avoiding what is true for the sake of what I have made so, like a mistaken type of zen master; what then is this faith? And, If i have a faith that i need not do anything for, why would I even call it faith? Either way, my faith seems then to not have anything to do with whether things are going my way or not, except that my faith concerns a justification of what i am doing. If i am completely removed from my relation with the world against which i have to justify myself, what need have I of faith? Even so, the world in which I behave without the necessity of justification, is sufficient for revealing the truth of the matter of faith. .

The pivotal issue has to do with one who has no faith and does nothing for it, that is, I am not working for my faith for I have no faith. Here then the issue of truth is presented in its fullest. One idea that truth needs no faith is basic to anyone who sees faith as having to do with religion or spirituality, where instead, one opts for a scientific, or perhaps, in a manner of speaking, a ‘practical’ approach to reality, one that needs no faith but is steeped in knowledge. This one works for knowledge. So what we have is a person who works for knowledge, but has no faith, but feels worthy despite whether or not such knowledge is working. In fact such knowledge is or contains or accounts for knowledge that works and knowledge that does not work. Here is one who is justified in his work despite the results of that work, and he thereby completes all of the possibilities of faith. Whether or not he calls his work a work of faith makes no difference except in that he would deny that his work is based in faith, for if it did not matter to him whether he was in faith or not, or working for it or not, then it would be equally valid to say that he indeed had or has faith. When he denies that he is working in faith, then he is exactly without faith but is working for something else, and in this a state of denial he is precisely having faith in the fact that he has no faith. He has not doubted, so his faith is in that he justifies himself in the terms of his doing, for if he was doing nothing he would have to justify it or he would not be worthy and his faith that is not faith would fail, since he had no faith by which to support his worth; his situation then is that he had no faith, was not working for it, and was not worthy. Hence, the truth that he was working for despite whether it worked or not would be found not true, but only true in so much as his working for it was allowing it to be so. This one would not see that indeed his effort is ironic, that in his not working, and so not being justified or worthy of the world, his effort was exactly one of faith.

To have faith in a goodness that permeates the bad spots of life, as if there is a transcendent good purpose, or proposer, of which I can only know a piece, an immanent piece, selects my person away from what may be true, into the world, which is to say, into reality; such a faith removes me from a relationship with the world where I am intimate with the truth, and leaves me in a relation of distance and denial, of fear and frustration, a potential that is grounded in hope. I become invested in a person that is mythological, one who misses the truth of the world for the glamour of heaven, which is exactly missing the adventure of existence for the beauty of fantasy. In this fantasy, the world and I are at odds of a natural course – this course, of course, needs an interlocutor, a fantastic redeemer, one who restores worth and relieves hope with the hoped-for.

I can come to this notion only through experience, not reality. If i see my experience is of, or gained from or through reality, then i can only hope that my experience is faithful. Through a faith that is based in hoping, because of my wanting to have faith, I inevitably find that my faith is actually a term I use to refer to a relation with my object of faith. I can say it is God, or a god, or spirit or daemon, the universe, or whatever, but I have some sort of interaction with the world where an element of faith is involved, where the goods and the bads are tempered with a certain kind of reflection, one that has me in reaction to things of the world. What have I done wrong? What have I done right? How can I go about things differently or what did I do so I can repeat it? What lesson have I learned? How can I apply what I have learned to present and future circumstances? As many of these questions are not answered satisfactorily, or such answers again yield still the same queries from oneself, i come to a crossroads and divide myself into experience: I thereby come upon transcendence and immanence localized in the meaning of an unrecognized world of doubt that appears as an object of faith.

So I begin to recede…

So it was, my faith was exactly not faith, but in that i had no faith i only had faith – yet i doubted this. A curious thing happened after a while of living life this way; I began to reflect upon my reflecting, for i could not have such considerations as to appraising the moment toward what i should do next unless there was some thing that aroused or caused such consideration, which is to say, the world, that is, unless i wanted to make the the world ‘happy’: In effect, i found myself, consciously, in a motion toward elements that were not me.

If this first reflection is exactly self-conscious, where my motivations and aspirations, strategies and tactics were geared toward establishing myself in the world, my second reflection is upon the elements by which I am developing such self-consciousness upon or towards; the reason I have such thoughts and behavior is exactly because I am a reflection of the world. The third reflection sees that the world is no longer a stage that I arrange and upon which I assert my play because I now am involved withthe world.

The second reflection emerged because I began to see that my conscious reflection really only occurred when things were not going the way I wanted them to. If things were good, I figured I was doing right, or rather, correctly, like they were supposed to, and my reflection only amounted to a “that was great” kind of feeling, if there was any thought upon it; my ideas concurred with a righteous presentation. I didn’t correct myself at these times, it seemed to come naturally. The only reflection i had upon such moments was that everything thing was ok, and from there I proceeded outward, away from reflection. What I had learned must be being put to good use; what I had learned was being put into practice; things were good. Only when things were not going good would I consider what I may not be doing right, and I would attempt to find out what was wrong. It could have been just being in the situation to begin with, or it could actually be something I did wrong; it could have been merely that ‘shit happens’. Basically, though, if it was good, I was good, but if it was bad, I tried to find out what it was so to reestablish it being good. Life was always toward everything being ok; i never tried to make things bad.

But the bad times would come again. The funny thing is, It never occurred to me that the position from which i drew my assessments might be incorrect, and it took a long time to see that regardless of what I was doing, despite all the mental and physical effort I made towards having a good life and being happy, bad times always came. The blind spot of my situation brought me to dwell in this situation such that i began to forebode of the good, to prepare for the bad to come and the manner by which I attempted to counter these grey times was at best a defensive attitude of indifference, tempered with a renewed fortitude. For a bit, the callus allowed me to have an identity.

Some would say “that’s just life”. Yet, still we endeavor for the good and this, in its most simplistic operation, is the basis of faith.

In so much as reflection is invested in life upon the good and the bad moments, I was in a relationship with life; for it seemed there was something else at work beyond my best efforts to harness it, something always fouled it up. This thing that fouled it up most of the time was the world, but still I was involved, and that made it personal. Here I was, doing my best. The feelings and thoughts around the times when everything seemed good and was going my way was exactly that I was correspondent with the world, which is to say, we were getting along. Whatever the particular aspects that I encountered of the world, these aspects agreed with me in the sense that I was being fulfilled. In so much as they didn’t agree with me, but yet my life was good, the effect was still that I was doing good, the world was ‘functioning’ for my benefit, on my behalf, so to speak, so i could ‘learn’. The relationship was good. Yet, I could not hang on to a faith that would disappear into hope when things were bad, for my faith did not thus disappear, i merely denied it. I would get angry and spiteful at the world and things in or of the world, but it remained; good or bad, the world remained intact for whatever it was doing. It was this realization, this rejection of pitiful insecurity disguised as strength, that the good and the bad was in fact based in a true and necessary relation, not a contingent relation, with the world that then allowed me to come to a knowledge of the situation I was in; this was the beginning of the third reflection.

When things went bad, I had to make an effort back towards life being ok and this effort had to do with my caring for the world, the world that gave me that with which i struggle. It could only be that the world and i were involved that i struggled. I could not longer deny in peace. The relationship did not end, now, in fact, i drew upon it, intuited from it what was off, what angles I could take, gleaned from it the overt and covert elements of the situation: i looked upon – indeed, engaged – the world for the information by which to bring a solution to the problem because it was though the world was working against with me despite myself. Never was there a time where I could dismiss myself from the world, in fact, so much as I may have had faith, I could not help but to consider the events of my life with respect to this other aspect of my experience that I could not control but nevertheless offered to me what i could control, which was really only that these things i could not control were informing me of what i could control because they were in fact things I could not control because they were presented to me as such, ‘those things I could control’. My faith waned as the truth began to assert itself as knowledge. The things I would do to correct the situations became acts of reconciliation or amends, instead of methods and coercements. Eventually I began to see the world not as an object upon which I reflect, but a reflection of the object I asserted when I reflected self-consciously upon the world. This second reflection came back to me, interacted with me, as a world not a stoic and inanimate void of substance concept, but as an emotional and conscious aspect of self, and this was the fourth reflection, where I come present.

The fiction above tells a story of the situation of reality. Reality occurs in the first reflection. The truth of existence begins, but is not always completed subsequently, through the second reflection. Reality occurs through the individual in denial of his relationship with the world. The first as it may move to the second has to do with separation, of an assertion of one upon the other, of control over impotence, of exception, of denial, of alienation, of identity: of the philosophy of the One true universe. The movement through and beyond the second has to do with acceptance, praxis and agency, as these are the beginnings to the motion that completes in the fourth reflection.

“Education is the practice of freedom”; where one ceases to doubt for the sake of individual identity, one has proclaimed his complicity in the game of oppression and staked the world against his faith.
‘Faith makes true’ is the operational maxim; for convention it is the basis of belief and the foundation of reality; for the ironic it is the process that leaves itself once the truth has become apparent. Instead of ‘making true’, faith becomes knowledge, such that what was faith then becomes a kind of willed ignorance, and the truth becomes that which accounts for it.

Direct Tangent: 3.14

Somehow we have to get to the point of this whole matter. Physicists,I understand, have discovered the Higgs boson particle; which is, if I am correct, the ‘Higgs’ boson, as opposed to some other type of boson; I figure some guy named Higgs predicted that there should be this particular kind of particle – and now they have found one. It has something to do with being responsible for matter.

Now, I am no physicist, but I do understand one thing: I cannot possibly understand what a boson really is unless I’m a physicist. I can only estimate for my thinking – but I should be careful because any further postulatizing I might do about the boson will be based upon my near complete misunderstanding and so would be most likely false. As far as I know, there are particles that have no qualities about them except that they have a sensible effect somehow, and that these particles ( I have to keep in mind that though they call them particles they are in no way like a grain of sand or a cracker crumb on the floor) combine in such a way as to allow for parts of an atom that eventually (in theory anyway: in the theory that involves me using the term ‘eventually’ as if to imply a temporal movement that occurs out of time and only in the logical linkage of thoughts) become particles in the way I typically think of them: having mass and energy, occurring uncertainly as a wave in one instance and a particle proper in the next – but really at the same time.

Now, I’m using this example to attempt to indicate what Laruelle is proposing. He is proposing that there is something beyond our ability to have particular knowledge about, as to quality, of which we can only have knowledge about that it must be there. He is saying that there is a knowable aspect, if you will, of being human, that informs ones ability to know things, and because this aspect informs what can be known, it is not knowledge of the same quality as that of knowledge proper, that is, what we typically understand as knowledge and the object. By this move, Laruelle is indicating a distinction of knowledges.

But in order to make this distinction, one has to speak very carefully – and even then we still get the more keen observers who do wade through his rhetoric and ask him: ” how do you know this”. In as much a Laruelle is framing the possibility of reality by his distinction, he simply answers: “because it is real”.

Who is being the smart-ass? Is it the question or the answer ?

See, the question is asking: if knowledge is knowledge, is what we know, then how can you know of something apart from knowledge ? In other words: isn’t then such knowledge merely more knowledge? So they say: ” How do you know this.”

But then Laruelle’s answer, part of the postulates of Non-Philosophy, is the distinction; he proposes it by the evidence that knowledge ( which he limits and delineates as ‘philosophy’, in order to specify and example by confining his attack to a noticeable and specific target) never gains its object, in fact, it keeps arguing and asserting the same premises, objectives and conclusions under different terms. So, for one, there has to be something else, that can only be called knowledge, that is able to notice this fact: This noticing must be of a knowledge that is somehow apart from the rhetoric which it recognizes. Laruelle thus says: “Because it is real”, meaning because it makes sense logically, but also because he knows it prior to logic.

If one does not see Laruelle’s argument that philosophy repeats itself, then that one will rebut to Laruelle: how do you know this? Because such a one is caught up in the progress that is asserted by thoughtful problem solving, he thereby sees that there is nothing outside of knowledge and so Laruelle’s proposition too is but a situating of knowledge – and a situating that is incorrect, to boot, because it indicates a contradiction of terms, and contradiction indicates fallacy, falsity. Yet, ironically, it is the veracity of this argument that gives Non-Philosophy it’s credence.

* * *

For now, I will let the irony try to work its magic, and will return with more later.