Donald T Palmgren (lonewolf@utkux.utcc.utk.edu)
Wed, 4 Mar 1998 05:16:54 +0100
Hello everyone,
First let me respond to Maggie's point about "abstract" and
"concrete" having different meanings for the man on the street. Your
right, of course, Maggie, that "concrete" certainly conjures the idea of
stable, lasting, solid... and "abstract" brings the ideas of being
etherial, w/o substance. But I think upon reflection we can see what I
mean (and not just I, but, I guess, what the "social-intellectual" level
means) by saying concrete things are in time while abstract things are
atemporal. My hat certainly is solid and preduring. But of course it came
into being at a definate point in the past; it has had a history; I've
taken it various places w/ me (Texas, Lousiana, etc.), and at some future
point it will be landfill. It's preduring but not permanate. And
"concrete" dosn't mean "solid object." The Catholic Church is a concrete
being, so is the U.S.A.
Now take an abstract thing like the number 5. That didn't *begin*
anywhere. And it won't end anywhere. And it's not localized to any place
either. Or think of the idea of a line. You've never seen a real line. A
line is a one dimentional entity having length but no hight or width.
Lines are abstract.
Like I said, I know that by language assosiation we want to
make concrete things the more (what should I say?) stable (?) of the pair,
but when we reflect on the two we see that something *in* time comes in -
has a history - and goes out. Lines and the number 5 on the other hand,
while definitly "etherial"...
O-kay, now on to "The Bodvar Challange" :
Jason named Husseral and Merleau-Ponty as potential pre-MoQ
canidates (PPMoQCs). I don't know a lot about either of these, but I do
know the bridge between them: Martain Hiddeger. He was one of Husseral's
students but rejected Husseral's philosophy and all phil. before him. He
said that metaphysics was totaly wrong-headed as it has been pursued and
must now end to be replaced by wht he called "Thinking." (Past
philosophers had looked at beings, but not Being -- the state of Being.)
He is (IMHO) one of the best metaphysicians of the 20th cen. (and a best
of all time). I can go into Hiddeger at more length if you want, but in
breef he says what really exists is Being, which is not a thing or an idea
or a consciouness, but a condition -- the condition which gives rise to
things and ideas (objects) and to the entity which knows them (subject).
(That's ultra-crude, but a charicature is a characiture.) Hiddeger also
sized on the idea that the ultimate explanandum of Metaphysics is *time*.
Metaphysics is, "What really exists?" And things exist by getting into
time. *How* something exists is *how* it gets put into time. From what
I've seen of the French existentialist, which is little -- well, I'll
confine my remarkes to Sartre since him I know. Sartre is basically
Hidegear w/ some other junk thrown in (and it is junk).
But let me back-up and look for some pre-20th cen. PPMoQCs.
Well, Hegel's thinking certainly steps outside around and all over
S-O thinking, but Hegel's so damn difficult to understand (getting rid of
that distorting prism is just the start!) (But after you begain to get
Hegel everybody else seems 2-diminional).
How abou Nietszche (another of my gurus)? He says we should think
of the world and everything in it as a/the manifestation(s) of "the Will
to Power." Often "power" is taken to mean "brute force" (-sigh-), but
people who actually read N see that he puts subtilty and efficentcy on the
side of power and sets it opposed to "massive brutle effects." But N, at
various times, describes "power" as, or interchanges it w/: more, better,
faster, oftener, and greater. And note that the world is the *will to*
power -- it moves towards it, dynamically, like the Tao.
Now having said that let me back-peddel a little. N was *not* a
metaphysition! He was a social philosopher. He thought (like others before
[Kant] and after [Hiddeger] him) that metaphysics was bankrupt. When he
says the world is the Will to Power manifest (actually it's always plural
w/ N -- the willS to Power -- competting wills) he wasn't laying down an
answer to the question, "What really exists?" -- he was saying, think of
it this way and you'll live better and things will make more sense. (N was
a "perspectivist" [realativist] and said there was no absolute, solid
truth, only points of view which varied in degree of Power.) (A great book
on N is *What N Means* by George A. Morgan... if it's still in print. My
copy is from 1941.)
So there's some anti-metaphysitions; how about non-"philosophers"
(whatever a philosopher is)? I think of Fredrich Froebel, a German child
educator/psychologist. He said that the universe is based on a "geometric
order" that is "moral and ethical" in nature. (He was a big insperation
for the great Amarican archetect Frank Loyde Write.)
And then (another of my gurus) sociologist Erving Goffman (who is
basically Hegel on the microcosmic scale -- face-to-face interaction
rather than sweeping historical "moments"). What really exists?
Social(moral) sittuations. ("Lab-rat and Gloria" was a Goffman-esque
move.)
And this isn't even to mention the Western mystics like Miester
Eckhardt and J. Bohme. And what about Shoppenhouer, a "German Buddhist"
who inspired Nietszche?
Where to start? (And more importantly, where to stop!?)
Well, Hugo clearly knows more about Fichte and Schelling than I do
so I won't say much about them (but Hugo I'd love to here more of what you
know of them [since Hegel was a personal friend of Schelling and he came
straight out of that "geneology," it's embarrassing how little I know of
them] and how you see them in relation to SOM and MoQ [or PPMoQC]). I will
say some words here, tomarow or the next day maybe, on Hegel.
TTFN
Donny
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