Bow down to her on Sunday,
Salute her when her birthday comes.

With respect to talking, which is all that I am now talking about here, I am responsible for my choice of words; I should not hide from my words, recasting my choice into a moral imperative or determinism; nor should I recast them by saying, e.g., they are just part of God’s plan.

They are my words.

But what if I don’t know what I am talking about?

I still said them.

Following some, like Austin, what does it mean to say that I said them freely, when I do not know what I am saying?

Sartre’s talk of authenticity is the result of introducing a paradox into consciousness, as "for-itself," which is what he uses ontologically to explain talking.

While in one way he does not make talking secondary, as Derrida does, he still sees it as part of the ontological category called the for-itself. This being is absolutely free, free even from itself.

So, following Sartre, one says that the for-itself is not what it is and is what it is not. It is always in a state of negating itself. (B&N, 86)

This is an inflation of my being able to choose my words, among other things. I just talk, sometimes freely, sometimes absentmindedly, sometimes unwittingly, etc.

Ontology is, once again, pointless. It offers no clarity as to talking.

Moreover, I do not see how chasing a paradox makes one authentic; except, possibly, an authentic fool. According to De Beauvoir, Sartre soon abandons this view of absolute freedom after writing the Devil and the Good Lord. (Adieux, 358)

“But can’t you see? That’s really what we are.”
"Sartre gave it up, why don't you?"
"The play shows that Heinrich is free to be trapped by the others."

(See how the paradox keeps working here?)

“No, forget poor Heinrich; we’re talkers, among other things; and I don’t always know what I am talking about or where I am going.”

(See the first comment to the post of 5/31/06.)

I don’t see why I have to say that consciousness is transparent. I don’t see what it adds to the discourse.

You see, I think that questioning and answering are clear enough; that is all that I need to say. (See the post of 4/10/06.)

The questioner does not have to be transparent for questioning and answering to be clear.

She's got everything she needs,
She's an artist, she don't look back.
She can take the dark out of the nighttime
And paint the daytime black.

(I’d give a bob for that, Mr. Dylan.)

http://orad.dent.kyushu-u.ac.jp/dylan/shebelon.html


While Sartre does not undermine talk or literature as Derrida or Heidegger, he inflates my knowing what I am doing and saying into “existential freedom.”

I make my choices. I am the source of my values. I choose my destiny. I make my own hell…

He says things like this.

He also says that I am responsible for what I do and that it is an absolute responsibility because I am absolutely free.

He says that existence precedes essence:

“Consequently, when I recognize, as entirely authentic, that man is a being whose existence precedes his essence, and that he is a free being who cannot, in any circumstances, but will his freedom, at the same time I realize that I cannot not will the freedom of others. Thus, in the name of that will to freedom which is implied in freedom itself, I can form judgments upon those who seek to hide from themselves the wholly voluntary nature of their existence and its complete freedom. Those who hide from this total freedom, in a guise of solemnity or with deterministic excuses, I shall call cowards. Others, who try to show that their existence is necessary, when it is merely an accident of the appearance of the human race on earth – I shall call scum.”

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm

It’s all there is to say, lad,
What you said there.
I heard you say it all,
Don’t you agree?

It’s not a case of modesty.
Or flim-flam.
You did not disappear
For all to see.

The words just finished up,
And you quit talking.
And now there’s none,
No loss for you and me.

Sartre does not try to recast talking. He knows it too well; by craft, he is a playwright. He writes dialogue.

His ontological categories do it no real harm.

How could he let them?

He stops with the transphenomenality of the being of consciousness.

So what if he puts a big capital ‘S’ on ‘stop’?

At least he stops and does not look at being as a place to get started so that talk becomes idle, masking deep secrets.

The example of being asked what I am doing is where Sartre begins his analysis of consciousness. I don’t believe you need an analysis of consciousness to see a point to the example.

However, it’s not that I must always know what I’m doing.

There need not be consciousness that is transparent to see this:

That it is a perfectly ordinary business for someone to ask me what I am doing. Generally, I can tell you. If I could not, conversation would certainly be different.

Do I have to say that conversation could not be otherwise?

You do not need to inflate this feature of conversation into an ontological category in order to say merely that, in talk, questions and answers involve “askers” and “answerers.”

Nor do you need this in order to say (merely) that in talk we ask each other what we are doing and saying, among other things, and that we do this satisfactorily.

Should we make this feature of human life primary?

To create another circle?

Clearly not.

But what we can say to someone, who wants to remove the talk from life or make it secondary, is ‘No.’

To say it is not secondary, is not to say it is primary.

Puleeze.

(That cautionary note is for any Procto-philosopher tempted to insert an order with Herr Doctor’s velvet finger.)

Rainy day child’s play

She pulls the puzzle into disjoint parts,
A canvas, whole in its glint; gleamed effect
Of French impression to aesthetic hearts,
In pieces now that fail to resurrect
Its dotted, distant quality.

And so the silence of the dotting rain
She severs with a quiet blurt of song
In her regression to a tumbled train
Of puddle, cloud and ruffled thrush along
Our bayou with its huddled polity.

When you have a regress in your thinking, it is there because you posit two things.

Then you find that you need a third to hook them together and a fourth to hook up the third, etc.

It is a problem in positing.

It is not a deep, dark problem in reality.

Remember. You got up on a podium and posited.

For your remedy, a modern Aristophanes would recommend a metaphysical suppository.

Getting a bigger hammer:

Sartre gets out of the regress, which is just a recursive circle, by saying, in effect, that by distinguishing the one consciousness as pre-reflective, he is not required to define the reflective part in terms of the pre-reflective part.

The difficulty here is that the term ‘consciousness’ has the baggage of the terms ‘phenomenon’ and ‘appearance.’ These terms were posited before Sartre, in order to avoid the notion of Aristotelian substance, as noted.(See post of 7/21/06). One has no idea whether to accept or reject Sartre’s analysis because one has no clear idea what the terms mean. They mean whatever you posit them to mean.

Why not just say something simpler? Why not accept this analysis of the case of counting cigarettes: In the garden variety case, when I am counting, I can say I am counting without having to think about what I am doing. If I could not generally do this, people would not ask me ‘what are you doing?’ If I had to pause all the time to answer the question, folks would come to doubt that I knew what I was about.

“What are you doing, Maub?”
“Trying to get this nut to budge.”
“Let me get you a breaker bar; I got one in the truck.”
“Much obliged.”

Versus:

“What are you doing, Maub?”
(Pause)
“Well, I have got this wrench…, and it’s on this nut…, and my forearm’s about to bust…, so I am trying to get this nut to budge.”
“You Ok, Maub?”

So what does Sartre say about this circle? He says that the very nature of consciousness is to exist “in a circle.” (B&N, lxiii) He seems to believe, as Heidegger, that a circle is somehow foundational to what he and Heidegger are talking about.

It is hard to boil down what Sartre is thinking, because he skirts a question that was much argued about, to wit, 'When one knows, does one know that he knows?' You could get sidetracked with this and never get to the point.

Obviously, there are times when you do know that you know: we say things like ‘I know that I know him; that’s Smith. He’s from Seguin and ranches over by Jones.’

Then again, we say things like ‘I don’t know if I know him, I may have met him a time or two at auctions some years ago. I guess I better go ask him.’

But Sartre does not think along these lines; he's trapped in this little problem for which he sees a regress as a danger( B&N, lxii). He has to stop the regress somehow, he thinks.

So now what does he do? Offer a theory? Another circle?

Yup.

What Sartre says is that if I am conscious of something, I am conscious of being conscious of it. So the nature of consciousness is to be in a circle.

If I am counting cigarettes, this is an act of consciousness, as I go 1,2,3…n. But if asked what I am doing, I can say immediately I am counting. I do not have to reflect on what I am doing to say what I am doing.

What I am reflecting on is the counting of the cigarettes so that I count them right. What I do not have to reflect on is that I am counting. The first is, for Sartre, a reflective consciousness, the second is a pre-reflective consciousness.

Enough of this for a day.

Sartre sees a circle quite early in Being and Nothingness. It may be related to the one that Heidegger sees. Sartre read Being and Time and often goes point for point with it in Being and Nothingness. Moreover, Heidegger acknowledges in a letter to Sartre that Sartre understood B&T better than anyone he had ever met.

I quote part of my dear friend (I say this not ironically, because a man who gets you to thinking is your friend) Enowning’s literal, but very adequate translation here of 6/26/06:

Freiburg on October 28 1945
Good dear Mister Sartre

It is only in the past few weeks that I have heard speak of you and of your book. Mister Towarnicki has kindly left me here your book Being and Nothingness, and I have at once begun to work on it. For the first time, I have met an independent thinker, who has reached deep into the field of experience starting from that which I think of. Your book shows an immediate understanding of my philosophy, such as I have never found before. I hope sincerely that we might enter into a fruitful debate, that would allow us to clarify essential questions. Ever since writing Being and Time twenty years ago, I have always faced the same problem; I see how to present many things more clearly and more simply; many misunderstandings could have been avoided…
http://enowning.blogspot.com/

The two were positers of a piece.

“That is the Thoughtery of wise souls. There they prove that we are coals enclosed on all sides under a vast snuffer, which is the sky. If well paid, these men also teach one how to gain law-suits, whether they be just or not.”

Aristophanes gets the point of philosophy at its very beginning. While his play may unjustly poke fun at Socrates, who was sincere to the fullest, Aristophanes has no doubt of philosophy’s irrelevance. Two of his main characters, Just Discourse (Right Logic) and Unjust Discourse (Wrong Logic), posture as poles of paradox, leading Strepsiades to a ruin worse than where he begins. But he does, in the end, burn down philosophy’s house:

STREPSIADES: Come, torch, do your duty! Burst into full flame!
DISCIPLE: What are you up to?
STREPSIADES: What am I up to? Why, I am entering upon a subtle argument with the beams of the house.
SECOND DISCIPLE: (from within) Hullo! hullo who is burning down our house?
STREPSIADES: The man whose cloak you have appropriated.
SECOND DISCIPLE: You are killing us!
STREPSIADES: That is just exactly what I hope, unless my axe plays me false, or I fall and break my neck.
SOCRATES: (appearing at the window) Hi! you fellow on the roof, what are you doing up there?

STREPSIADES: (mocking SOCRATES' manner) I am traversing the air and contemplating the sun.
SOCRATES: Ah! ah! woe is upon me! I am suffocating!
SECOND DISCIPLE: And I, alas, shall be burnt up!
STREPSIADES: Ah! you insulted the gods! You studied the face of the moon! Chase them, strike and beat them down! Forward! they have richly deserved their fate-above all, by reason of their blasphemies.
LEADER OF THE CHORUS: So let the Chorus file off the stage. Its part is played.

http://classics.mit.edu/Aristophanes/clouds.html

SOCRATES ignoring this:
Come, oh! Clouds, whom I adore, come and show yourselves to this man, whether you be resting on the sacred summits of Olympus, crowned with hoar-frost, or tarrying in the gardens of Ocean, your father, forming sacred choruses with the Nymphs; whether you be gathering the waves of the Nile in golden vases or dwelling in the Maeotic marsh or on the snowy rocks of Mimas, hearken to my prayer and accept my offering. May these sacrifices be pleasing to you.
(Amidst rumblings of thunder the CHORUS OF CLOUDS appears.)

CHORUS singing:
Eternal Clouds, let us appear; let us arise from the roaring depths of Ocean, our father; let us fly towards the lofty mountains, spread our damp wings over their forest-laden summits, whence we will dominate the distant valleys, the harvest fed by the sacred earth, the murmur of the divine streams and the resounding waves of the sea, which the unwearying orb lights up with its glittering beams. But let us shake off the rainy fogs, which hide our immortal beauty and sweep the earth from afar with our gaze.

SOCRATES:
Oh, venerated goddesses, yes, you are answering my call!

To STREPSIADES:
Did you hear their voices mingling with the awful growling of the thunder?

STREPSIADES:
Oh! adorable Clouds, I revere you and I too am going to let off my thunder, so greatly has your own affrighted me.
(He farts.)
Faith! whether permitted or not, I must, I must crap!

SOCRATES
No scoffing; do not copy those damned comic poets. Come, silence! a numerous host of goddesses approaches with songs.

http://classics.mit.edu/Aristophanes/clouds.html

Hegel thought that philosophy, as a science of first principles, was an improvement on religion. He placed revealed religion as the final step before absolute knowledge.(Phenomenology of Mind, 789)

He thought that if we should clear up the confusion of religion, we would become absolutely clear. (A future-less-vivid for you.)

Each one of the steps in the Phenomenology of Mind is a kind of positing. Hegel begins by positing an immediate knowledge which is incomplete. (POM, 149f) One needs to posit something else to complete it. He begins with the immediate, the ‘this here’ or the ‘that there’ and runs into the problem of ‘what is this here?’ or ‘what is that there?’

The little bit that is here or there has to be something, e.g., a bit of paper. So he posits something, perception, to account for the bit of paper. (POM, 160)

Each positing requires another, comprising a trail to complete clarity. Upon reaching the end of the trail he references Schiller:

“The chalice of this realm of spirits
Foams forth to God His own Infinitude.”

(POM, 808)

Hegel had to start somewhere. He defined a place to start. From this apparent beginning, he was able to move to the apparent state of absolute knowledge.

However, since there are only arbitrary places to start philosophy (see posts of August 9-12), philosophy is not an improvement on religion. It is a religion of its own. That one can begin it is an article of faith.

One has to believe that “here is the place to start.” But there is no reason to believe this.

Moreover, one has to have faith that another will let him begin. (Another communion with one’s fellow man.)

Not only that, because philosophy runs in circles, it has no race of St. Paul to finish. (2 Timothy 4:7-8)

For twenty five hundred years there has been this false religion of first principles, touting itself at the expense of others, running sore the poor Athenian who heeds it.

“What’s puzzling you is the nature of my game.”



“So what are you saying?”

“Nothing.”

“What?”

“In sum, I’m saying that, as to first principles, there is nothing to say in philosophy, certainly that

1) as dialogue, it should never have arisen, except perhaps as a kind of game which one can decline to play,
2) as written, it posits a false beginning.

Thus, that there is no philosophical position. That, therefore, I do not hold one.”

“But to say that by itself is paradoxical. How can you say it without being philosophical?”

“I’m not philosophical. I am not saying, as a seeker of first principles, that there are no first principles, then post modernly grousing about it, destroying discourse because I falsely believe nothing is Nomos and all is Chaos."

http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/greeks/philosophy/rationality.htm

“There has to be one or the other, ultimately.”

“No. There can be neither. Dialogue is just fine, thank you, until you subvert it with paradox or tautology.”

“Hah, so talking is first. I got you.”

“No. I’m saying that there is no argument for first principles without circularity, so the entire enterprise is flawed. Therefore, I am not a philosopher. I have no position. But I’ll have a beer with anybody and talk. I’m a man, not Dasein.”

In a quirky way, Derrida opens with a kind of liar’s paradox. When he denies the voice (the spoken word) as the primary symbol, he goes too far.

He could have just denied voice in the manner of a kind of modern nominalist. He could have just said that there is no primary symbol. (See post of 5/19/06)

But he does not.

He wants to take the voice and make it subservient to a bigger notion---Text. Text is “the beginning of writing and the end of the book.” (OG, 6) For Derrida, the book represents the old writing. It is written with the idea that speaking is primary. But, for Derrida, that notion of writing is wrong. The book needs to become text to be understood.

So Derrida posits a position that is superior to speaking and writing. Then he looks at what is said, in order to rearrange it so that speaking is no longer primary. This is what deconstruction is.

He begins with the book, but with saying what it does not say, since what it says prior to this rearrangement is somehow wrong. What it says prior (i.e, as a book) requires the deconstruction in the first place to make it into text.

So one can say things like “Look at what the man does not talk about. This is the real(i.e., deconstructed) meaning of the book.”

Thus, he begins with an order to what has been said, independently of it, and ordering what has been said in terms of what it does not say.

This is to say that to understand the book one has to understand what it does not say.

Thus, in terms of text, if the book said it, it did not say it. If it did not say it, it said it.

“There you go again, getting philosophical on me.”

Derrida interrupts speaking by making it an inferior part of text. He believes this also changes writing, which is inferior to speech under the old view that his deconstruction is going to cure.

His ways steamroll the talkers of the world.(See post of 5/22/06)

“And after all it is you and me.”

“Suppose I say…”

The following paradox is an example of how one can confuse himself by positing. One asserts that “This statement is false.” Then one says that if the statement is true, it is false. Then he points out that if it is false, it is true.

(Oh, my goodness, what should an ordinary, cross-eyed, non-philosophical fellow do?)

This is an example of converging what one says into giving a kind of order to what one says. One purports to state something and implied in stating it is that the statement is false. So if the statement succeeds, it fails, and if it fails, it succeeds.

Maybe we make the move to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Or maybe we don’t. Maybe we just say:

“There you go again, getting philosophical on me.”

But we can also note that this is why philosophy, as the search for first principles, can be quite paradoxical. If it does not change the subject by reordering it, usually by redefining terms, it has to speak out at the beginning, ordering what no one has yet brought up. In this, its worst case, it brings something up and gives order to it all at once.

Here it offers a statement, ‘this statement is false,’ and then orders it ( makes it an ‘F’ not a ‘T’) with the very same statement, ‘this statement is false.’ It then posits both (or the one) as paradox for beginning theory.

(“My word. It’s a monad-dyad.”)

It is a true conversation stopper, while it can keep a computer looping forever.

Continued from the prior post:

You do not have Heidegger’s problem without a problem of order. You do not have this problem in conversation. Conversation happens. On a bus, on talk radio, etc. It does not need an English teacher to order or rearrange it. Nor does it need a philosopher.

If there were a meta-conversation that made conversation possible, and you had to order or define the latter in terms of the former, you would have Heidegger’s problem.

But you have to posit the meta-conversation, as Heidegger posits being, to have the problem. If you do, you are in a circle of your own positing. This has nothing to do with “concrete ways of investigating.” It has to do with you.

You’re the one who put it there by positing. Who told you that you had to posit? You got up on a podium and posited.

Philosophy, as Heidegger does it, is not possible without positing. A few lone folks, Ockham, for one, tried not to “multiply entities beyond necessity.” If you are true to Ockham’s spirit, you do not posit. You certainly do not need to posit at all with respect to conversation.

Conversation is understandable on its own. As has been shown already, it can decline philosophy at any time.

With conversation you do not need to posit anything, and so you do not have Heidegger’s circle wrapped in the cloak of Thales.

(Here idle talk is king.)

“I watched with glee
While your kings and queens
Fought for ten decades
For the gods they made…”

Heidegger thought that he had explicitly to formulate “the question of being.” But he also thought that it was clear that there were beings, so he needed to find the right being to formulate the question of being explicitly. Were dogs or cats the right beings? No. Somehow the being of the entity which questions was the place to start. This was the being that asks and answers questions.

“And after all, it is you and me.”

So we first have to explicate you and me, whom he calls Dasein. We have to explicate ourselves in regard to our being. But how can we do this since we have not answered the question of being? I.e., how do we talk about our being if we do not know what being is?

“Is there not, however, a manifest circularity in such an undertaking?” (B&T, H7)

His answer:

“Formal objections such as the argument about ‘circular reasoning’, which can easily be cited at any time in the study of first principles, are always sterile when one is considering concrete ways of investigating. When it comes to understanding the matter at hand, they carry no weight and keep us from penetrating into the field of study.” (B&T, H7)

It is not a formal objection to say that ontology is circular.

It is rather an objection to the way ontology works.

Back to Herr Martin:

Assume that ‘being’ does not need explanation. Assume ‘being of the questioner’ does not either. Assume we know exactly what Heidegger is talking about with these terms.

To posit an order such that one comes first is like making the ascending order come first.

“You mean ‘being’ should come first because it is one word and not four?”

It is to produce an ontology by a kind of fiat. It is to posit the 'real way.’

It is remarkable that Heidegger found himself in a circle and thought it was somehow profound. He thought it was profound because it was foundational (B&T, H7-8, M&R 27-28), though he was in a circle of his own terms and order.

(A big Grund.)

If you read philosophy, you accept its podium.

Thus, to read a philosopher and show him respect, you need to find where he started and why he started there. If you are going to respect the podium of first principles, you need to find the paradigm case or cases that make up the beginning of his analysis.

In the case noted in the most recent posts, you can see that the position arises from inflating the significance of learning to count and a particular way to do it.

You should respect the podium if you accept it.

This is why methods of reading philosophy, unless they involve something along this line, often subsume a work under a rubric rather than explain it.

(Like that of the Derridean, who frets not over what the work says but over what it does not say.)

One might say, by way of diagnosis, that you did all this positing because you posited learning to count as the place to begin rather than learning to talk, learning quantities, learning numerals, etc. These were mentioned in passing (a few posts ago) as other things that were also said to come before generating integers.

It has already been established that you can start philosophy anywhere if someone will let you. So you can start with any of these other things as well. But it should by now be clear that there is no special place, and you are not a special thinker for starting with learning to count, since you can start anywhere. (Remember, if someone will not let you, you cannot begin at all.)

If someone lets you, you might lead yourself to offer a deduction of an order from learning to talk, etc.

How about from how we learn letters?

http://www.bible-history.com/isbe/A/ABBA/

For those in the professional elite who invite only a few to their podium, mark this well:

Since you can start philosophy anywhere, there are an indefinite number of orders to deduce so that you might earn your philosophical honor and wage. You can be a new Kant with a new transcendental deduction.

Just think of it.